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THURSDAY
Thursday, November 15, 2012 X Volume 25 No. 91
THIS WEEK
Sun Peaks opens this weekend to skiers and snowboarders Page A33 Thompson River Publications Partnership Ltd.
Private MRI found what ER could not
STICKING IT TO THE BLAZER Ethan Schock (left) and Ryan Swart try to sneak one past Kamloops Blazer Ryan Rehill during the annual Peter Puck Blazer Skate on Tuesday, Nov. 13 at Interior Savings Centre. About 80 kids from the skating and hockey school, between the ages of four and 11, came out to skate with the major-junior hockey club, which will try to return to its winning ways on Friday, Nov. 16, as it hosts Portland in the first of a seven-game homestand. Faceoff is at 7 p.m. Andrea Klassen/KTW
By Tim Petruk STAFF REPORTER
tim@kamloopsthisweek.com
In early February, Chris Austinson woke up with a tingling numbness in his left arm and went to Royal Inland Hospital’s emergency room to get checked out. The doctor there looked at Austinson’s chart and told him he was fine. It wasn’t the first time the symptoms had appeared. In 2010, Austinson was injured on the job. “About a month later, I woke up with this intense pain and numbness and tingling in my arm,” he told KTW. “I had doctors telling me it’s muscle spasms — ‘It’s in your head, you’re going to have to just tough through it.’” The symptoms eventually went away. Austinson said he felt fine until that February morning. “It happened again,” said the 41-year-old, who was otherwise in good health and employed in a physically demanding line of work. “I lost function in my left arm. I had immense pain and body spasms and all kinds of stuff going on.” But, he said, the ER doctors told him there was nothing they could do — even during subsequent visits in the month-and-a-half that followed. “I went to the ER four or five times and that whole time they were just dicking me around,” Austinson said. “I was so scared. My GP [general
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practitioner/family doctor] finally begged for an appointment with me with a neurologist.” Austinson said he shelled out $2,400 for an MRI at a Kamloops clinic ahead of the appointment. “I get my MRI done, show it to the neurologist and he said, ‘Yup, you’ve got a herniated C7,’” Austinson said. “He said, ‘You need surgery right away.’” Austinson’s left arm, it turned out, was in atrophy. “They told me I had 40 per cent nerve loss,” he said. “Five days later, they had me in for surgery.” Thanks to a bone wedge and a titanium plate, Austinson said, he’s now back to 100 per cent. But, he said, doctors told him he could have been permanently disabled if the injury had progressed. With that in mind — and with that $2,400 bill in hand — Austinson said he met with Dr. Dave Sanden, RIH’s chief of staff. “We went to the hospital and said we wanted to put a complaint down,” Austinson said. “We had a really long meeting with him. The gist was that he was going to write a letter of apology. “It must have got lost somehow, lost the email or something.” Attempts by KTW to contact Sanden were unsuccessful, but Austinson said the doctor told him his file should have been handled differently. X See HE ADMITTED A12
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