"Canadian health care, folks. Best in the world."

"Had a bit of a health scare last night, but thankfully it wasn't a heart attack."

"Tried to just breathe a bit and see what happened, but it started to get worse so I went to the ER."

"Not sure what it was, though, because once they were sure I wasn't dying I was thrown out into the waiting room."

"Canadian health care, folks. Best in the world."

 Adam Burgoyne, 39, Montreal 

Adam Burgoyne died of an aneurysm after a long wait in a  hospital emergency room. Dignity Memorial

"We will carry on with his spirit demanding high convictions of all of us."

"We will carry on without him reluctantly but steadfastly. We will miss him and love him deeply until the end of time."

"His many family and friends will miss his sarcastic humour, his quick wit, his deeply felt convictions, his smarts, and his way of cutting through any stormy situation to reveal the core of what really matters."

Adam Burgoyne obituary

This resident of Montreal felt unwell and did what many feel impelled to do; seek medical help at a hospital emergency room. One day after he appeared at that ER, and received initial assessment as a triage measure to identify those presenting with acute symptoms of an impending health breakdown, he died at home on December 6, of a brain embolism. Following that assessment he was instructed to return to the waiting room, and after waiting six hours without being ushered to the care of an attending physician, he gave up the wait and decided to return home. 

 All the while he had been posting his situation to social media on X, where it received attention from an interested public commiserating with his situation. He  found it amusing that part of his chest was shaved for an electrocardiogram test: "I feel like Samson after his hair was cut", he quipped in one of his posts. Another post noted the hospital had made no move to test his blood or take X-rays. "I suppose that might have happened had I been willing to wait 18 hours", he observed.

His posts reveal that  he hadn't felt any panic prior to visiting the hospital, that he experienced pain on the left side of his chest, and his skin felt clammy. Later on, he informed his X account followers that he had slept away most of the day following his trip to the hospital. The man had a troubled health history, addicted first to alcohol and then to recreational drugs. In October of this year it was six years since he was "clean and sober". 

He discussed years earlier in an interview that he had come out as gay around age 15, with a paucity of role models and drinking became problematic in his mid-20s. He lost some of his friends at that time: "They didn't want to be around my antics. I was drinking about two bottles [of high-proof beer] a night.  I am surprised that my liver still functions today." His drinking led to his become reclusive: "One of the biggest things about addiction is shame."

When he was 32, he was offered a glass pipe with crystal methamphetamine. "I knew that I had made a very grave error", he said when his crystal meth addiction "completely supplanted" his alcohol addiction. "That was a really lovely gift wrapped in really ugly paper. It forced me to confront what I had been denying", he said. Now, his family wrote: "In honour of Adam, hug your loved ones, take life one day at a time, bake bead, and buy the fancy cheese", they placed in his obituary.

      Adam Burgoyne Twitter post

"Many emergency rooms across the country are overflowing and patients across Canada are waiting far too long to receive necessary care."

"The scene is not new but unless we make major systemic changes, it will continue to repeat itself."

Canadian Medical Association report