They allege that their son, Cayden Kingston, 7, was refused treatment in the emergency room at Saint John Regional Hospital due to his vocal stims, which can be quite loud. Cayden is on the spectrum, has ADHD and epilepsy. In the week before their trip on July 15, they had some of the worst seizure episodes. His family wants to get the word out about the tragedies that families of children with special needs have to face in hospitals.
Cayden, who is non-verbal, has suffered from seizures since he was born. In the midst of the tragedy, on the day of the incident, Lorissa and Glendon Kingston took him to the hospital. He was having vocal stims, screeching and yelling with no communicative purpose. Lorissa was careful to make clear to the attending nurse that these stims were not things that Cayden could help. On past trips to the hospital, Cayden’s family was given their own hospital room. That space was essential when Cayden started showing more of the same behaviors.
This time was different. CeCe’s family was given grave news, and were told it was time for her to leave the emergency room. Unfortunately, Cayden’s vocalizations were most recently affecting the care of other patients. “If he can’t stop screaming, you guys will have to leave and you won’t be welcome here because he’s disrupting other patients,” the nurse reportedly told them. It was the first time they had been turned away from a facility because of Cayden’s reactions.
On July 15 SJRH’s emergency department reached the extraordinary level of 206% occupancy. This overcrowding was bad enough that it appears to have motivated the request to remove the Kingstons. Pam Power, the clinical executive director of emergency medicine and critical care at Horizon Health Network, made the promise that “no patient is ever turned away from the ER.” She echoed that Horizon literally follows a checklist triage protocol to the letter.
“We aim to provide compassionate, inclusive care to all patients. This includes making efforts to accommodate patients who may be non-verbal, neurodivergent, or have other communication or behavioral challenges,” – Lorissa Kingston
Despite this guarantee, Lorissa is still worried about their visits going forward. She’s not sure if she can trust that her son will get the right care a second time. “In the future, I know that I would bring him back if he had to go back but the thought is still going to be in my head: ‘What if they kick us out again?’”
It was Glendon Kingston, Cayden’s father, who first raised alarm about the severity of his son’s situation. He detailed how absence seizures can lead to catastrophic injury. The absence seizures are much more severe than his baseline ones that he has where he’s jerking. The ones that are missing can cause problems… like brain death,” he explained.
The Kingstons have repeatedly contacted the hospital’s administration but say they’ve been ignored on the serious concerns they raised about their loved one. Lorissa had such a great experience that on the same day of her visit, she sent an email to tell us about it. She has yet to hear any response back from the hospital administrators.
“It will never be like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m confident that he’ll get the help he needs.’ I just want the people who I’ve reached out to to do something because I know that they have the power to do it,” – Lorissa
By telling their story, the family hopes to shine a light on their cause. They fight for improvements in hotels or other places a family must go when seeking out medical attention for children with special needs. They envision a country where access to quality care is a right and not a privilege.
“(It) is basically a human right that you need medical help, you go, you get the help you need. And they turned him away. So, it was sad because they were discriminating against him for being different,” – Lorissa
