Treatment resumes for local chronic pain patient

By GILLIAN SLADE on January 18, 2020.

gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade

A chronic pain patient who’s treatment was abruptly stopped by the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta, is once again receiving the care he needs.

Trevor Moore was receiving IV infusions with ketamine that were providing relief after years of severe pain in his ankle and foot and the resulting depression. About a week before Christmas, CPSA demanded it be stopped immediately.

He is now regaining the momentum of the relief the treatment brings.

“Mentally it feels great for my family and I to have hope again,” said Moore. “It will take some time for me to fully trust the system again based on the fact things can clearly be derailed in the snap of a finger.”

The infusion Moore receives is administered by pain specialist and anesthesiologist Dr. Gaylord Wardell at Sante Surgi, an accredited non-hospital surgical facility in Medicine Hat.

Just before Christmas Moore had had the preliminary medication, before the ketamine, when Wardell received an email from CPSA instructing clinics such as his immediately cease providing ketamine.

“If this practise is occurring in your facility, it must cease immediately. At this time these types of treatments administered by physicians in Alberta are to remain solely in the hospital environment,” said Aria Maier, program manager of Clinical Accreditation Services at CPSA – in part.

CPSA has now approved Wardell to provide ketamine for the treatment of chronic pain and depression in addition to its use as an anesthetic.

“I had to send in document after document of things that they already knew. We’re a non-hospital surgical facility. We’re fully accredited. All the information that they asked us for again was stuff that they already had,” said Wardell, who as an anesthesiologist has been administering ketamine for about 15 years. Santi Surgi is fully equipped and authorized for general anaesthesia and IV regional blocks.

Wardell says it would have been more appropriate for CPSA to simply pick up the telephone and talk to him that day. He remembers the awful situation he was in having started the preliminary stage of the treatment for Moore when that email arrived.

Moore was impacted on a number of levels in the three or four weeks he was without ketamine treatments.

“Mentally, physically and emotionally having to deal with the hasty return of all my symptoms. It was increasingly more difficult to manage with each passing week,” said Moore. “Over and above dealing with my routine symptoms and struggles, my family and I were also dealing with some of the trauma associated with how abruptly I was removed from treatment. It was a very difficult Holiday Season.”

Moore hopes things will change at CPSA so that in future they have a better understanding of all pain and depression patients across the province.

“I want them to fully understand the impact they have on the lives of the very patients they are to protect, in an effort to ensure proactive strategies are utilized rather than reactive,” said Moore.

He hopes CPSA understands the power it wields and that they choose to use that to advance treatment options rather than retract them.

For Wardell there is the feeling that CPSA has become a policing organization that has the right to “make the laws, enforce the laws and hang the accused.”

“When they have the right to come and search and seize anything in my office they want simply because they think it’s the right thing to do, we don’t have a chance,” said Wardell.

Moore has been able to arrange for a conference call with the CPSA to take place next week.

“I will be given a chance to share my eight-year journey into darkness with them at that time, as well as ask some questions in an effort to find some emotional closure in all of this and allow my family and I to heal together,” said Moore.

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