One family’s 8-month fight for health care for disabled son

Renee Benoit has done her best to work behind the scenes to help her son, but her frustrations are boiling over and shes out of ideas.

Benoits 10-year-old son, Dominick, has severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, epilepsy, is legally blind, non-verbal, cant walk and has the mental development of someone less than half his age.

For the last eight months, Dominick has lived in a hospital room in Kentville, his mother making the drive from her home in Masstown several days a week, to sleep on a cot beside her son. Benoits husband, Rex, remains in Masstown where he works.

A hospital is no home for a child, said Renee Benoit. Its no place for a child to live.

Dominick has been living in the hospital since he was discharged from the Evergreen Home for Special Care in Kentville. Benoit said the discharge was a result of Dominicks doctor at Evergreen no longer wanting to treat him. Without a doctor, Dominick had to go.

Benoit said it was about a year ago things first got difficult at Evergreen when changes were made to Dominicks care plan against her wishes. With pending dental surgery at the time, Benoit said she wanted to wait for the surgery before making the proposed changes.

With Dominick you always do things one thing at a time.

She learned of the changes two days after they were made when a nurse called to inform her. The doctor who made the changes would not talk to her about it, she said.

It was almost as though my parental right to consent to or refuse treatment was taken away from me.

In March, Benoit was able to get her son a new doctor, but Evergreen informed her the only way theyd take back Dominick is if one-on-one care could be arranged. After applying to the province, the family received approval in April, but Dominick continued to wait in hospital.

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One family’s 8-month fight for health care for disabled son