Montreal man dies waiting nearly 12 hours for ambulance; daughter demands answers

It was 5:21 a.m. when Myron Cybriwski called 9-1-1 to request an ambulance.

He told dispatch he had hit his head recently and could not get out of bed, and was therefore unable to get himself to the hospital.

In the first 9-1-1 call placed that morning, on May 14, the dispatcher tells Cybriwski that he will send a paramedic as soon as possible, but there could be delays of up to seven hours.

He was told to call back 9-1-1 if his condition worsened, and then the dispatcher wished him good luck.

Cybriwski made two additional calls to 9-1-1 for help.

Paramedics finally arrived on the scene at 4:50 p.m. – nearly 12 hours after the initial call to emergency.

But it was too late. Cybriwski had passed away several hours earlier.

“When I spoke to the coroner, he told me that most probably my father had passed somewhere in the early morning, so before noon,” said daughter Stephanie Cybriwski.

The three calls are now the only thing she has left of her father’s final moments.

“When you lose a parent, sometimes you’re sad and, you know, you picture them passing away when they’re older and maybe in a hospital bed, you don’t picture your parent passing away alone, possibly, most probably in pain, waiting for help,” she said.

She says her father did not call her, that if he did she would have been there with him, but fears the situation would have resulted the same way.

“He lived on a second-floor apartment. There would have been no way for me to bring him down the stairs and into my own car or a cab,” she said. “I would have called 9-1-1 myself.”

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CityNews reached out to Urgences-santé about the situation. They said they are not able to comment while the coroner’s investigation is in progress.

They did provide a staffing update though, saying a new cohort of 17 paramedics began in July. They are also hoping to receive an additional 25 new recruits in September once they complete their internship.

‘Enough is enough’

Last month a 91-year-old Montreal woman died while waiting seven hours for an ambulance.

Stephanie says enough is enough. She’s calling for those in charge to do something about Quebec’s crumbling health system. She says without significant improvements, the system will continue to fail Quebecers.

“I don’t necessarily blame the ambulance workers because as you know, I have a lot of empathy for the two that ended up showing up and finding my father in that condition,” she said. “The fault lies more in the higher ups with the government. You know, we’re sounding the alarm so many times now saying, ‘hey, there’s an issue, there’s a big lack of workers.’”

In a statement to CityNews, the Ministry of Health and Social Services said:

“(Patients are) triaged on a priority basis, regardless of their clinical condition… If several users of the pre-hospital network are on standby at the same time, the clinical condition of the users according to the paramedic ambulance technicians (ETP) dictates their priority for being assessed by the triage nurse.

“However, notwithstanding the level of priority granted, emergency personnel strive to release the ambulance team as quickly as possible in order to optimize the availability of pre-hospital resources on the territory, thus allowing a better response to the clientele.”

Stephanie Cybriwski will continue to remember her father as a kind person, the first to help anyone before himself.

“If your pipes were broken, you needed someone to paint something, he’d be there for you,” she recounted. “He loved playing golf. He was looking forward to getting back onto the field.

“He was always the first person to make you laugh, make you smile.”