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 Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Genovy is seeking treatment for several disorders, but claims that the Ministry of Health has been her biggest obstacle to getting the help she needs. (Chris Doucette/QMI Agency) |
OAKVILLE, Ont. — Ontario’s healthcare system appears to be so badly broken that it seems saving money has become more important than saving a 17-year-old girl’s life.
Cassandra Genovy has suffered from a severe eating disorder, suicidal tendencies and other mental health disorders, since she was barely a teenager.
And a little over a year ago, with her health beginning to deteriorate physically, she began reaching out for help.
But so far, Cassandra claims the Ministry of Health has been her biggest obstacle as she’s tried unsuccessfully to get herself into a potentially lifesaving in-patient treatment program.
“It took a lot of courage to finally decide that I wanted to get well and to admit I couldn’t do it on my own,” the teen told QMI Agency Thursday.
“So to reach out for help and find that there was just nothing available was devastating.”
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Cassandra, who had attempted to kill herself or seriously considered it five times in just over a year, was turned down by numerous treatment programs because she was too young, too old, not skinny enough, or sick enough, among other things.
At every turn she was told by doctors and others in the health-care field that there are no programs available in Ontario, or Canada for that matter, capable of treating the complex multitude of issues she faced.
Ultimately, Cassandra was told to look for a program south of the border, that OHIP would pay if there was a treatment she needed that wasn’t available here.
The teen initially found a program in Arizona, but she had to switch gears when she learned Remuda Ranch wasn’t on the government’s list of approved treatment centres.
She then settled on a provincially approved place called New Haven in Utah.
“I was excited at the thought I was going to get the help I desperately needed,” Cassandra said, explaining she was able to control her eating disorder, somewhat, rather than it controlling her because she was filled with a new-found sense of hope.
However, Cassandra quickly found out that getting approval from the health ministry was easier said than done.
Even with Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn helping and her mom, Joanne, navigating their way through the confusing health-care system, her application for out-of-country medical care was denied twice for an assortment of reasons.
Her application was recently denied for a third time because the ministry had suddenly found a doctor in Mississauga who ran a program that was capable of treating Cassandra — a program no other doctors were aware of, even though it is run out of Credit Valley Hospital not far from Oakville-Trafalgar where Cassandra was checked into the psychiatric ward a few months ago after her latest suicide attempt.
“It’s so frustrating,” Joanne Genovy said of trying to get her daughter help, a process that has also caused huge financial and emotional strain on herself, her husband and her other daughters.
It seems the ministry is now bent on jamming a square peg into a round hole and Cassandra’s life is hanging in the balance.
The Credit Valley program is actually for adults. Its own literature states the four in-patient beds are for people suffering from anorexia and it does not treat people with binge eating disorder.
Cassandra has bulimia, but she also “binges and purges”.
Joanne said she can’t help but be angry that the ministry is “forcing” her daughter into a program that seems so wrong for Cassandra. And to top it off, she has to wait another three months to get started.
“They’re playing with my daughter’s life,” Joanne said, adding she doesn’t know where to turn.
Dustin Tibbitts, the executive director of New Haven, was shocked to learn the province was attempting to put Cassandra into an adult program.
“I’ve never heard of that before,” he said.
“This story is horrifying, because they are forcing an inferior form of treatment for a complex set of issues,” Tibbitts added. “It would be like being forced to see an acupuncturist when you have a broken femur — it just won’t work and will likely get worse over time.”
Flynn, a Liberal MPP, said he and his staff, who have been “doing all they can” to help Cassandra, are in regular contact with the ministry and the doctor who runs the program at Credit Valley.
He said both have assured him Cassandra would get the treatment she needs at Credit Valley.
“But this family has been put through hell,” he admitted. “They’ve been fed all sorts of misinformation from the medical community, so I don’t blame them at all for being frustrated.” The whole ordeal has left Cassandra once again talking about hurting herself, the teen’s mom sad.
“After her appointment Tuesday with this doctor, she cried all the way home,” Joanne said. “And that night she asked me, ‘What do I have to do, do I have actually kill myself before someone will listen?’”
chris.doucette@sunmedia.ca