On a Thursday in January, Normand Meunier arrived at the hospital in Saint-Jérôme, Que., with a respiratory virus. Weeks later, he would emerge with a severe bedsore that would eventually lead him to seek medical assistance in dying (MAID).

Meunier, 66, had been a truck driver before a spinal cord injury in 2022 left his arms and legs paralyzed.

Before being admitted to an intensive care bed for his third respiratory virus in three months this winter, Meunier was stuck on a stretcher in the emergency room for four days.

His partner, Sylvie Brosseau, says without having access to a special mattress, Meunier developed a major pressure sore on his buttocks that eventually worsened to the point where bone and muscle were exposed and visible — making his recovery and prognosis bleak.

“Ninety-five hours on a stretcher, unacceptable,” Brosseau told Radio-Canada in an interview.

“Every time we go to the hospital, it’s my duty to tell them that Normand is quadriplegic and needs an alternating pressure mattress … I don’t understand how this can happen, because a mattress is the most basic thing.”

Brosseau says although she advocated for her partner, she was told the special bed had to be ordered.

‘I don’t want to be a burden’: Meunier

Without access to a mattress that shifts pressure points to prevent the formation of bedsores, a patient’s position must be changed frequently, says Jean-Pierre Beauchemin, a retired geriatrician and professor at Université Laval’s faculty of medicine.

“When you’re lying down, always in the same position, there’s hyper-pressure between the bone and the skin,” said Beauchemin.

“A pressure sore can open in less than 24 hours, and then take a very long time to close.”

The buttocks, heels, elbows and knees are particularly vulnerable.

A rotation schedule every two hours is generally necessary for a person confined to bed, according to a Quebec Health Ministry reference sheet.

Meunier had previously suffered other bedsores, notably on his heel, but nothing as disabling as the pressure sore he developed after his hospitalisation in Saint-Jérôme.

Speaking with Radio-Canada the day before his death, Meunier said he preferred putting an end to his physical and psychological suffering by opting for a medically assisted death.

He was told the sore — a gaping hole a few centimetres in diameter — would, at best, take several months to heal, according to the experts they consulted.

According to his partner, he underwent two debridements in one month — a treatment in which dead or infected tissue is scraped from wounds to help them get better.

“I don’t want to be a burden. At any rate, the medical opinions say I won’t be a burden for long; as the old folks say, it’s better to kick the can,” said Meunier.

He died at home on March 29.