Posted on 02/09/2016 7:02:14 AM PST by lowbridge
A girl who died of leukemia was given a final send off after her friends signed her casket with loving messages on January 30.
Laura Hillier got to experience a few normal childhood milestones like graduating high school and getting her senior year book signed before she died on January 20.
Laura might have experienced a few more milestones if a Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, hospital had been able to accommodate a bone marrow transplant for the young woman.
Numerous donors were a match with Laura and ready to donate, but Hamilton's Juravinski Hospital didn't have enough beds in high-air-pressure rooms for the procedure.
Hospital staff told her they had about 30 patients with potential donors, but the means to only do about five transplants a month.
Laura was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at age 13.
She had been completely cancer-free for approximately four years after her first battle with AML, and relapsed this past May.
Though Laura was able to achieve remission for a second time, she relapsed again in November 2015.
Dr. Ralph Meyer, Juravinski's vice-president of oncology and palliative care, told Ontario's TheStar.com there are plenty of others facing the same situation as Laura in Canada.
He said donor registries are growing in size, and technological advances allow transplants to safely happen between people who are less of a match for each other are becoming more and more common.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I don't think it matters.
The joy of “free” government controlled health care.
Canada and socialized medicine has the high cost of death.
Remember Liam Neeson’s wife Natasha Richardson dying in a Canadian hospital a few years back from a bump on the head during a skiing accident. If she had that accident a few miles south in Pennsylvania, at Seven Springs Resort, they would have airlifted her to Pittsburgh to one of our world-class hospitals and she could have been saved.
“...and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” - John Dunne
“Natasha Richardson”
From what I remember, a number of docs said she died needlessly.
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