A Light in the Storm: The Ezekiel Stephan Story pt.3
By Laurette Anderson
If you have been reading the preceding episodes of the Ezekiel Stephan story, you know that the mass media system has funneled the narrative through the fabricated bias of parental fault and carelessness. The fallacious and fictitious story goes that David and Colett Stephan’s neurotic avoidance of immediate “allopathic” medical attention, for their mortally sick child, caused his death. And it was death by bacterial meningitis in every headline, every story, and every pronouncement of guilt by the mass media minions. The Supreme Court of Canada has since quashed the original verdict and ordered a new trial which will be very different because now more than 200 pages of missing documents have been recovered and will now be entered into testimony, sure to embarrass and hopefully punish those who perjured themselves in the first trial.
So how did David and Colett become the unwitting center of this perfect storm? The story according to their own words begins with Ezekiel catching a cold. The illness runs its course and he seems to be getting better. There is nothing out of the ordinary here for parents of toddlers. It’s normal. His parents are watchful and when he takes another turn for the worse – no fever but sluggish and not himself – they have a nurse examine him. The nurse finds no symptoms of concern. He has no fever and again appears to be on the mend. The nurse says keep an eye on him, and also says that a hospital visit would result in the medical professionals sending him home with the same advice she gave. She does however, plant the seed that there was a case of meningitis at the hospital and so they might watch for those symptoms. Keep in mind Ezekiel has none of the symptoms of meningitis. This is the seed that sat at the back of David and Colett’s mind but the next day Ezekiel appears fine and is coming back to himself with no symptoms of illness at all until his breathing pattern changes in rhythm and sound and before they can figure this out, he stops breathing. Colett does CPR and Ezekiel coughs up fluid and mucous – a blockage in his airway. They decide to take him to the hospital as this is unexpected and seems serious. They had been seeing recovery until that moment. The lack of other symptoms and this sudden turn caused concern. Remember that the nurse checked him the day before. On the way to the Cardston Hospital, about a mile down the road, Ezekiel stopped breathing again and Colett resumed CPR and they called 911. While doing CPR she stated that there was a gurgling sound as she is giving him air. The dispatcher sent an ambulance from Cardston rather than from the closest location only a few minutes away. A second error – he sends the wrong code “ineffective breathing” instead of the correct code “not breathing at all”. The first ambulance arrives and within a few minutes Ezekiel’s care is taken over by the paramedic staff. They don’t allow either parent to stay with Ezekiel in the ambulance. What the parents are not informed of is that the ambulance has been destocked of all equipment necessary for the intubation of a child of Ezekiel’s age. They are left in the dark from this point on, not knowing that their child for the next eight minutes will be oxygen deprived due to this fatal shortfall of medical equipment.
And now I need to ask this important question. Who failed to provide the necessaries of life? David and Colett? Or our medical system? The Stephan’s first and only mistake, is that they trusted the trained professionals to take over Ezekiel’s care. This could happen to any parent. We all seem to trust the medical system in an emergency. This story was not told. Instead you may have read about the ‘folly of anti-vaxxers’ who use garlic and onions to cure colds. Only a handful of reporters, writing for virtually all of the mass media news outlets, were responsible for the mass distribution of propaganda. Not one of these writers did an actual investigation or interview with the Stephans to find out what happened. These common presstitutes were writing for a conspiracy driven agenda that pushes allopathic medicine and vilifies natural medicine. Mass media equals propaganda here in Canada now. There was clearly no research into proof behind what they declared were facts. It was cleverly implemented by the few corporations who own the media in Canada, and it created a thunderous noisy storm around the central hidden truth. A clear view of the rotten center was obscured in a frenzy of falsehoods and the public shaming of Ezekiel’s parents. Thus they avoided the inevitable public scrutiny of the facts which would lead to the truth. What truth? That our medical system is broken. Here’s what happened after Colett and David are relieved of the critical care of their son according to the documents, logs, reports, charts, x-rays and letters collected through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. These documents, missing from the trial, were analyzed by medical professionals. More than 200 documents, previously missing, were recovered. Here’s the story those documents reveal.
While Ezekiel was in the ambulance, logs and records show that Ezekiel went eight minutes without oxygen as a result of the lack of correctly sized intubator equipment. The second ambulance arrived and it has also been destocked of intubator tubes of the correct size for a toddler. Arriving at Cardston Hospital, medical staff again struggled with the wrong size intubator tube. The correct one was installed more than 40 minutes after he initially stopped breathing. According to Gordon Rock Investigations who had independent medical professionals analyze the medical logs and entries from the ambulances and the Cardston Hospital, Ezekiel suffered a severe hypoxic injury (that’s oxygen deprivation) as a result of the lack of any pediatric airway equipment to fit a toddler. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to understand what just happened. Our medical system just took a healthy child with a likely temporary emergency -phlegm blockage in the throat? – and deprived him of oxygen while fumbling with improper equipment, causing major brain damage. I am not blaming the paramedics. Just imagine your own horror being placed in the same position with no appropriate equipment to deal with a dire emergency, especially one involving a very young child. And also, they had been misadvised by dispatch on what the problem was. The medical system’s incompetence does not discriminate. I’m sure the paramedics did their best in a bad situation. But it was not good enough. Where was the necessary equipment for the ambulance? Who’s budget cuts interfered with medical staff being able to do their job? This puts us all at risk in an emergency. The depleted system not only jeopardized this young toddler’s life but also tragically killed him. In an emergency situation I would rather be in China or Russia right now as Canada’s system gets the lowest grades for the high cost of an ill-managed and deteriorating system.
Now we come to the more disturbing side of this story: the deception, the cover-ups, and the officious and cruel treatment of the innocent parents; where what appeared to be a tragic series of unlucky events and a flawed system becomes a nightmare of corruption and duplicity. Why wouldn’t they allow a parent to ride with the child to the hospital? And here also begins the conspiracy to cover up this seriously flawed medical system. Could it be because they knew this was going to be a major fiasco, being ill equipped to deal with this emergency? Witnesses to the broken medical system in action could not be allowed. This was a debacle of extortionate proportions. Helpless to do anything about it, are the panicked, stressed parents who are kept away from a cherished child whose life is now seriously in jeopardy. Only two minutes after the ambulance arrives on the scene the medical professionals took over the care of Ezekiel. That’s taken from their own records. According to the emergency service logs obtained, there was a lengthy list of failures including the following:
Unable to attach rhythm strip from EPCR (portable health monitor)
Manual ventilation failures – wrong size bag valve mask – non-effective seal – 2 unsuccessful attempts
Airway adjunct failures – type oropharyngeal airway positioned correctly but removed due to inability to secure airway.
(By now the Fire truck and another ambulance arrive on the scene.)
IV-10 Access failure – 1 attempt; Complication: child with no circulation
Size 3 Endo-tracheal tube inserted: Difficult intubation Wrong size tube due to inventory deficiency
According to the ambulance logs another IV access was successful, but this is contradicted by the Doctor’s report at the Cardston hospital and so begins the cacophony of contradictory statements and reports. There are no logs at all from the fire truck that showed up. At Cardston’s hospital things go from bad to worse. They try another intubation tube but tragically they use the same size the ambulance used – size 3. It already failed once. A complete seal is not established resulting in an air leak. Finally at approximately 10:20pm this tube is swapped out for the correct size 4-cuffed tube, which seems to work and Ezekiel is resuscitated. But the damage is done.
There was an x-ray taken at Cardston in which there would appear to be trachea damage or a puncture. This is the fact that came out in the post trial forensic investigation privately sought by the Stephans. Ezekiel’s lungs were collapsing according to all of the radiology reports from the Cardston x-ray. What could have caused that damage or puncture? Maybe the medical personnel struggling with several wrong sized intubator tubes? That x-ray also showed that there were no pathogens in the lung. Gastric distension was also noted on the Cardston x-ray. Most interesting of all though, is that the Cardston x-ray was omitted from files used in the Prosecution’s case against the Stephans. It contradicts the evidence provided at the trial by the attending doctors. The trachea tear in this 18 month old baby was caused (according to medical experts in the investigation) by an undersized intubation tube being inserted with enough force to not only tear his trachea but also to leave a deep gouge in the pleura below the tracheal tear. Think about that for a moment. The doctor responsible denied having anything to do with the procedure – under oath – even though the hospital records placed him as the medical professional who performed the intubation. This is a key piece of evidence, possibly not provided because it would have shone light on the truth. Another key piece of evidence, a CT scan which showed Hypoxic injury associated with the slow oxygen deprivation caused by the medical errors, was also missing.
There were over 200 pages of documentation missing from disclosure. The doctors in testifying said that physical examination of Ezekiel showed obvious signs of bacterial meningitis. Isn’t it interesting that no physical tests for meningitis were performed in the hospital and yet in court, without any lab evidence whatsoever, doctors say the symptoms were bacterial meningitis. Do you see the magnitude of the conspiracy yet? And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
I’d like to be able to tell you what happened at the Lethbridge’s Chinook Hospital, but unfortunately after more than one hour and fifteen minutes of critical care at that hospital virtually no documentation exists. There was a letter from a doctor denying any involvement in Ezekiel’s care. Interesting that this was one of the sole surviving documents.
At some point between Cardston hospital and Lethbridge’s Chinook Regional hospital, an “unknown entity” administered Rocuronium. Ezekiel went into cardiac arrest immediately following this first dose of Rocuronium. According to the investigation notes, this would be extremely dangerous to administer because of his highly hemolyzed blood – high potassium levels. Staff would be aware of this from tests done on Ezekiel at Cardston.
I looked up Rocuronium online and found this statement (source: www.medicines.uk.org/emc)
“The experience with rocuronium bromide in rapid sequence induction in paediatric patients is limited. Rocuronium bromide is therefore not recommended for facilitating tracheal intubation conditions during rapid sequence induction in pediatric patients.”
I’m not sure if this applies here but it does indicate extreme caution. But what follows is very disturbing. During the flight from Lethbridge to Calgary hospital, the STARS crew administered Rocuronium three more times. Although I am no expert in science or medical issues, common sense tells me you don’t inject a drug that just resulted in cardiac arrest and is contraindicated due to highly hemolyzed blood three more times. Do you? Someone needs to explain this. One might guess they were trying to kill him rather than save him. Like I said, I’m no expert and maybe there’s a perfectly rational reason for it. But I think it at least raises serious questions that need to be answered. Also, Ezekiel experienced three cardiac arrests during his critical care time with the professionals. More concerning is that the third heart attack was only discovered after the private investigation uncovered an obscure document from Alberta Justice Dept. that was turned over to the Medical Examiner’s Office. This heart attack was ‘off the record’ so to speak. There is far too much exculpatory evidence that was ‘off the record’, unavailable, destroyed or hidden by those in charge.
Worse than this is that they tried to sweep it all under the rug, blame and shame the parents and punish them with prison time and character assassination instead of facing up to and admitting their own errors and beginning the long road to repair on our broken medical system.
The system instead sought to protect itself and deflect the incredible evidence of blame and saw fit to shine the blazing light of interrogation on the parents during the worst crisis of their lives. Such compassion! So while Ezekiel lay dying at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, medical doctors worked on convincing David and Colett that it was bacterial meningitis and then they arranged for the police to interview them separately, as though they were suspects in a crime, after they had been awake over 40 hours going through the most traumatic event of their lives.
They say the best defense is a brutal offence, right? And who better to implement the propaganda necessary to create the perfect storm of shame and blame on the family than the Canadian mass media system itself – Canada’s National News Agency – The Canadian Press and its minions all swirling around the dirty secret like a massive filthy tornado. There but for the grace of God go you and I, and justice for any Canadian swept up in this powerful maelstrom. This was criminal and all Canadians need to see justice done for the Stephans because they represent all of us in their fight. If you are one of the people residing in Alberta you should be particularly interested in this trial. It began June 11. If you can write or do a YouTube video to cover the court case as it unfolds then do it, post it and let Canada follow it closely. Only Canadians can protect their human right to justice and access to the truth. We obviously cannot trust our news agencies with this responsibility. We cannot trust our Medical System due to this newly exposed corruption. And the connection between the Justice Department and the Medical Examiner’s Office needs special scrutiny. The Medical Examiner’s Office in Alberta is no stranger to scandal. The Edmonton Sun covers the details in one of their stories. You can find details here: http://edmontonsun.com/2016/12/07/a-turbulent-history-of-albertas-medical-examiners-office-2/wcm/ea692311-c6c3-4660-bfe3-4584c5ff7555/amp
There is still so much more to this scandalous saga. So as the trial for justice and truth unfolds stay tuned for the next in our series on the Perfect Storm, as we shine the light of truth for Ezekiel Stephan.
Laurette Anderson. The Relevant School. Skills for a Joyous Life! www.relevantschool.com
