Two years ago, on a morning at the end of November, Sylvie Hudon woke up trembling like a sheet.
The 66 -year -old woman, who is paralyzed from the waist down, trembled for what she says they were the first signs of sepsis.
She hadn’t seen him come.
Just the previous day, the nurses who visited his house in the city of Quebec had told him that “he had no need to worry” for a bed located at the bottom of his back, even after marking a bad smell.
He would later discover that his wound contained four different types of bacteria, while one had entered his bloodstream. The hole in the back ended up being the size of an orange, which extended to the bone.
“It was something important,” said Hudon, who called an ambulance for herself. “[They] It took me to the operating block immediately. “
Hudon says that he should never have reached that point.
Since 2020, I had received Visits at home from CLSC nurses three times a week to monitor, change bandages and clean pressure pain, frequent occurrence for people with limited mobility or spinal cord injury.
“During those two years, maybe 20 nurses came to my house … When you have a rotation like that, they cannot be compared once with the next if it is redder or more pink or larger or smaller,” said Hudon .
“It’s not a single person who lost it.”
Months of hospitalizations and surgery later, he is sharing his story in the hope that his situation will not be repeated.
While he does not point his finger at home care nurses, saying they were doing what they could, he says that people with pressure injuries deserve better attention.
“I can’t be satisfied with basic attention. We need more,” said Hudon. “We need someone who can make a real evaluation.”
Together with the defenders and patients in the city of Quebec, it is asking for the development of additional specialized resources for people with spinal cord injuries who deal with calmers in the Quebec city region.
At the end of January MOELLE EMPINIèRE et Motricité Québec (Mémo-QC), a defense group of people with disabilities, presented a request with more than 1,500 signatures in the National Assembly, requesting the expansion of services and the creation of a clinic responsible for prevention, research, training and wound care management. , particularly in the east of Quebec.
‘How old have I lost?’
For about two months at the hospital, Hudon says he had to sleep from his side, and when he returned home, he could only sit three hours a day.
“I was limiting my exits, limiting all family relationships,” said Hudon.
The same happened for Simon Plamondon when he developed his first Bedsore in 2018.
After he was admitted to the Pneumonia hospital, the resident of the Quebec city returned home with a pressure wound. Although he had a CLSC domiciliary care plan, he says that within a week, the Bedsore doubled its size.
Almost two weeks later, he went to the emergency room for what would be the beginning of several hospitalizations.
At the age of 38, he estimates that he has been hospitalized for more than a year.
“How many years have I lost?” PLAMONDON said. “I’m starting to meet again … I’ve spent too many years with depression, I can’t see anyone. I disconnected.”
He says that one of the reasons he continues about his experience is by due to Normand Meunier – A Quebec man who chose to chase assisted death after developing a severe Bedsore in similar circumstances.
“I have always chosen resilience,” said Plamondon.
“We have the right to be healed. We have the right to be treated without delay.”
16 similar testimonies
Between March and June 2024, Mémo-QC gathered 16 testimonies of people such as Plamondon and Hudon in the Quebec city area that suffer from pressure injuries.
Ariane Gauthier-Tremblay, a community organizer of Mémo-QC specialized in the defense of rights, says they approached the Ombudsman of Quebec with their findings.
Although the Quebec city has a rehabilitation center for people with spinal cord injuries, Gauthier-Tremblay says that once discharged, patients trust the home care of nurses who “do not see many people with injuries with injuries the spinal cord. “
“It’s a bit of community,” says Gauthier-Tremblay.
“Therefore, they would treat wounds such as a diabetic wound or as a post operational wound that is not appropriate.”
In October 2024, the Quebec Ombudsman published a report that discovered that the regional services of the Quebec city available to prevent panties or its deterioration “is not enough and does not adapt to the reality of people with an injury of the spinal cord. “
The Ombudsman issued six recommendations, especially guaranteeing that nursing staff providing home care services perform a complete clinical examination and has access to the services of other professionals to optimize the treatment of the injury.
At the end of 2025, the local health authority was also asked to confirm the deployment of pressure and training injury prevention tools in all its emergency departments, as well as the creation of a directory of patients with marrow injuries Espinal who have developed a bed.
In a statement sent by email, a regional health authority spokesman said that upon receiving the report from the Ombudsman, “quickly” they implemented the six recommendations. They said they have carried out the follow -ups requested with the Ombudsman.
“One is still in progress, namely, the deployment of pressure injury prevention tools in all Ciussss emergency departments of the capital-nationale, and the implementation of training related to these tools, which will be completed in the Next weeks, “said the statement.
In a statement sent by email, a spokesman for Santé Québec says that people suffering from any type of disability have the right to attention.
“It is important to note that Ciusss of the Capital Nationale has taken significant and concrete measures, after the presentation of recommendations,” said the statement.
Chronic wounds a “massive” problem in Canada
Dr. Sheila Wang emphasizes the importance of addressing the bed in her earliest stage.
Subjectivity and lack of standardization can be a problem, he says, when it comes to measuring and tracking wounds.
A dermatologist at the Women’s College Hospital Care Center in Toronto, Wang, helped launch Swift Skin in 2015, an application to ensure that health professionals make consistent measurements.
“It wasn’t until I entered the School of Medicine and I was seeing wounds that I realized … how massive are chronic wounds,” Wang said.
“Only in Canada, like 30 to 50 percent of all medical care implies wound care.”
Categorized in four stages, he says that the sores are much more severe once they entered stage three and four.
“You can create an infection that even begins to enter the bloodstream,” he said.
Taking into account the necessary care to recover and prevent a severe Bedsore, which includes special mattresses and ideally adjustments every two hours for patients in bed, it says it can be difficult for a person to do it alone or with limited resources.
“Obviously not enough,” Wang said. “We can do better.”
