A Langley, B.C., woman says she is being denied access to the records of her mother’s last days.
Gertrude Sharp, fondly known as Trudy, passed away last June at the age of 101 after spending the last months of her life at the Cedar Hill Long-Term Care Facility at Langley Memorial Hospital.
“Amazing woman,” her daughter Barbara said. “Just amazing. Way ahead of her time, right?”
She said her mom lived on her own until she was 95 when she had an accident and moved in with Barbara.
“I looked after her as she aged more and she became she became more mentally challenged with dementia, which happens to many, many people,” Barbara said.
“As we know, it’s a very terrible illness, but always cheery, always took her for her hair every Saturday. You know, she loved to go and play the slot machine or, you know, do fun things. We would always go out for dinner. I mean, she was a very engaging person, very, very full of life.”
After trying public and private home care and trying to find a place for her mother, Barbara had to move her to long-term care at the beginning of 2023.
“It is an absolutely horrific place,” she said. “It’s the one… by the Langley Hospital. I wouldn’t put my worst enemy in there, but I had no choice.”
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Barbara said they put her mother in a room with three other people and she had serious concerns about the care her mom received at the facility.
“They were very clear to me that they were not a registered dementia facility, but 80 per cent of their clients in there have dementia,” she added.
“So there’s no training. Nobody knows what they’re doing and they don’t care. They just treat them like numbers. It’s terrible.”
Barbara said her mom even had an infection in her toe and the staff did not treat it. She said her mother didn’t like coffee and when she visited her one day she had coffee all over her blouse and staff had not cleaned her up.
“I know she was older and she had a good life and all that, but she didn’t I didn’t like her dying the way she died,” Barbara said.
“And she didn’t have to die that soon if she’d had proper care. And everybody has a right, regardless of their age, to live longer and get proper care under our system.”
Barbara had Section 7 powers, allowing her to make health and financial decisions for her mother.
“She gave me the authority to look after her when she could no longer do it, her health care and her finances,” Barbara said. “So it’s just appalling.”
Fraser Health has refused to hand over Trudy’s records, citing privacy.
“These people refused to give me information even when she was still alive,” Barabara said.
“They wanted her to sign it, sign the request for her medical information. I said, ‘no, no, no, no, here’s my full Rep 7 agreement’. Didn’t matter. They still didn’t want to give it to me.
“And then when she passed away and I asked for medical records, of course, one of the things on the request is, what do you want this for? So I said negligence, right? Well, of course they’ve refused to give it to me completely now.”
In a statement, B.C. Health Information Management says Sharp’s record request was denied because she did not prove she was acting in the interest of her mother.
“She’s lived with me for five years, giving me complete authority over everything to make sure that she’s looked after and they’re refusing because, well, she has privacy rights even after she’s passed away,” Barbara said.
“I don’t disagree that people have privacy rights after their passing. But she gave me the authority.”
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