Rhianna Millman is pictured on July 27, 2023, holding a photo of Keegan Combes, left, a young Skwah First Nation man who lived with her family for two years before his death in 2015. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)
Story of Keegan Combes’s neglect at B.C. hospital fuels nursing college’s anti-racism work
After his death, she discovered he was likely poisoned by accidentally drinking windshield wiper fluid. A clerk at the convenience store where Combes liked to buy snacks told Millman he’d bought a bottle of the bright yellow liquid, after seeing another customer purchase the same thing.
Millman believes Combes may have mistaken it for an energy drink of a similar colour her husband often had around the house.
“I just truly hope that he wasn’t in too much pain,” she said.
Remembering Keegan lays out in detail the ways systemic bias against Indigenous patients affected Combes’s care, and makes it clear that his death was not the result of one or two “bad apples.”
It outlines several “culturally unsafe encounters” both Combes and Millman experienced at Chilliwack Hospital beginning on Sept. 15, 2015, including the long delays in diagnosis and treatment, the decision to restrain him, the lack of communication and the overall neglect of a grievously ill patient.
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Caregiver says nurses failed Skwah First Nation man
Those encounters began right after Millman called 911, when emergency responders and then hospital staff assured her they “knew Keegan,” which the report says suggests they held negative preconceived ideas about him.
Then, after Combes arrived — and long before doctors realized what was wrong with him — a resident doctor suggested Millman place a “do not resuscitate” (DNR) order on his file. The doctor said this recommendation was based on his “quality of life,” according to the report.
“This suggestion … echoes a racist stereotype that has been a part of Canadian society for hundreds of years. Since first contact, one of the ways that settler Canadians have justified colonization is a faulty belief that Indigenous people were physically inferior and destined to ‘die out,'” the report says.
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