The patient has low immunity, but she says she had to share a room with three other people
Masking and physical distance rules at The Ottawa Hospital are “all wrong,” according to a patient with pneumonia and lung cancer who tested positive for COVID-19 while getting care there.
Glenda Senack, who is 65 years old, went to The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) a little over three weeks ago because she had a cough that made it hard for her to breathe.
She was told she had Stage 3 lung cancer last fall, and doctors thought that the radiation treatment had given her an aggressive form of pneumonia.
Senack was kept in a semi-private room with just one other patient at first because she has a weak immune system. But she said that all of a sudden changed two days later when hospital staff put her in a room with three other people and didn’t tell her why.
Senack said she could reach the patient next to her with one arm. People would walk into the room without masks.
“That was totally wrong,” she said.
A few days later, Senack and another patient were both found to have COVID-19.
“I was really worried,” her son Charlie said.”Stage 3 lung cancer is already a very bad thing. When you add pneumonia to that, it’s a very bad situation. Then add something like COVID-19, which is known to attack the lungs, and that’s just a deadly mix, in my opinion.”
Senack was given antibiotics and was released from the hospital on Tuesday after being there for weeks. But her family thinks that the possible risk she faced could have been avoided if COVID-19 had stricter rules.
“COVID might not mean the same thing to the average person as it did, say, in March 2020, but for people like my mom, it can be fatal,” Charlie said.
COVID-19 protocols were changed ‘as necessary
Masks are no longer required at TOH as of June 12 in public areas like hallways, cafeterias, meeting rooms, and clinical areas where direct patient care is not given.
In May, Montfort Hospital, Queensway Carleton Hospital, and The Royal, a mental health center in Ottawa, all made changes that were similar.
A TOH representative said they couldn’t comment on specific patient cases, but they did say in an email that “masks continue to be required at The Ottawa Hospital during patient care, in patient rooms, and on outbreak units.”
Depending on the symptoms, the same is true for both the emergency room and the outpatient area.
“Masks are still widely available throughout The Ottawa Hospital,” the statement said, even though they are not needed everywhere.It said that visitors and patients who felt sick should always wear one.
The statement didn’t say anything about policies for physically separating patients who are weak.
“We will keep an eye on what’s going on in the hospital and the community and make changes as needed,” the statement said.
But Senack and her son said that none of these rules seemed to be followed very closely while she was in the hospital. They told the hospital that it should do better.