“Hello. I’m Laura Hillier.”
The voice of the 18-year-old girl cracks in distress.
She’s propped up on a hospital bed, eyes swollen from crying, lips stained red from bleeding lungs.
“. . . I’m in the ICU . . . I can’t breathe. Soon, a tube will be stuck down my throat again. And for feeding as well. And I won’t be able to talk. They said I may not wake up but I really hope I do. But if I don’t, I hope this never happens to anyone ever again. And that the government sees that there needs to be funding. Because people are dying when we can save them. We can save these people. Please help. Thank you.”Laura recorded these words, shared for the first time, because she thought they would be her last.
While her friends were graduating high school and settling in as freshmen at university, the Burlington teenager was getting a cruel lesson in the fatal shortcomings of Ontario’s health-care system.
Laura went to Juravinski Hospital in Hamilton expecting to get better, cured even.
Yes, the acute myeloid leukemia that nearly killed her five years ago was back but it was beatable.
Laura Hillier, 18, of Burlington, died in January of a form of leukemia considered curable.
But doctors say the health-care system failed her by forcing her to remain on a wait-list for a stem cell transplant until it was too late..."
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