Cape Breton woman seeks MAID over lengthy workers' compensation delays

A Cape Breton woman who has been fighting for more than a decade for benefits from Nova Scotia's Workers' Compensation Board says she will continue to push ahead as long as she can.

But Melissa Ellsworth said she can't wait any longer for pain relief and has applied for medical assistance in dying, also known as MAID.

Ellsworth said workplace injuries while nursing in 2006 and working as a corrections officer in 2009 have left her with constant pain and unable to eat properly.

The 54-year-old has been off work since 2010, and has shrunk a couple of inches in height and now weighs under 100 pounds.

"I can't live with this type of pain and I'm disintegrating to nothing, and the options that I have for quality of life are there, but workers' comp is refusing to provide them, so I have no option really but to apply for MAID," she said.

Won 10 of 11 appeals

Ellsworth was first injured when a psychiatric patient in a Halifax hospital threw a chair and hit her in the head. The second injury came when an inmate assaulted her, dislocating her shoulder and eventually leaving her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Despite diagnoses of trigeminal neuralgia — also known as the suicide disease because of the severe facial pain it causes — and PTSD, Ellsworth said WCB case managers have denied her claims for treatment.

She has appealed those decisions to the board's tribunal and won 10 of 11 decisions there. Four years ago, Ellsworth won a battle for medical cannabis treatment.

Ellsworth has continued to fight for other benefits. For example, her jaw has not worked properly for years, so the WCB approved liquid meal replacements. But Ellsworth said after 10 years, her body can't tolerate the supplements anymore.

She said she has asked for a chewable meal replacement that would help her retain some use of her jaw — rather than submit to a permanent feeding tube that would mean never being able to eat properly again — but the board won't approve the alternative.

In addition, the WCB denied injections for pain in 2010 that were finally approved in 2015 after an appeal tribunal overturned the initial decision, Ellsworth said, but by then the injections were no longer helpful.

She's now getting palliative treatment with pain pills and medical cannabis, but Ellsworth said the strength of the cannabis prescription is too low and the board won't change it.

She said she is speaking out not only to improve her case, but because she wants the WCB completely overhauled.

According to its most recent annual report, the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal overturned 56 per cent of all cases last year where someone questioned a WCB case manager's decision to deny benefits.

Slowly starving to death

Ellsworth said she is not giving up the fight, but she no longer has any quality of life.

She has anxiety and depression on top of her other diagnoses, which have led to her decision to apply for medical assistance in dying.

Ellsworth said she's slowly starving to death anyway.

"I love food, but can you imagine being hungry, but not being able to ... I can't even eat hamburgers," she said. "I can't open my mouth far enough. And now I'm living across the street from my parents who get to watch this with their own eyes, day in and day out.

"So in my case it's more of I plan to leave this world with what little dignity that workers' compensation leaves me with, and right now, it's not a lot."

Ellsworth's friend Kendra Hill, also 54, said she has also had difficulty getting WCB benefits after suffering back injuries as a nurse at the Cape Breton Regional Hospital in 2006 and 2013.

Hill said she has had surgery on her back and neck, but her mobility is progressively being affected and she also has chronic pain. Being off work permanently has also led to PTSD, she said.

"One day you are at work and you have your job to go to," Hill said. "You have your colleagues. You have your regular daily life. You have your full paycheque.

"Then all of a sudden, your pay is cut in half. You don't have that social life that's connected to work. When all of that is gone from your life, it's traumatic."

System designed to deny or delay, Hill says

Hill said the workers' compensation system is designed to deny or delay benefits, and like Ellsworth, she has also struggled to receive such things as massage therapy and an occupational therapy assessment of her home, despite orders for those from a doctor.

"This is your life now and you've missed all of that and now on top of that, you have to deal with this monstrous bureaucratic entity that seems to want to squash you at every turn," Hill said.

Ellsworth said the fact that 56 per cent of cases that went to the tribunal last year were overturned on appeal shows the system is an "epic fail" that is making people suffer for years before granting benefits.

At a legislative committee in April, Labour Minister Jill Balser revealed the government is planning a wide-ranging review of the workers' compensation system.

She declined an interview request, saying she cannot comment on individual cases, but said in an email that the government must to balance the needs of workers and employers and that it would be sharing details of the review in the fall.

NDP labour critic Kendra Coombes, who questioned the minister in April about the proposed review, said she hopes it will result in positive changes.

"The problem is with Melissa [Ellsworth] and her health, my fear is that it will come too late for her," Coombes said. "My fear is that she either will have died, or the damage would be too far gone for her to get healthy again."

She also said having more than half of WCB case manager decisions overturned on appeal is a clear sign that something is wrong with the system.

"It's not acceptable that we're seeing that many overturned," Coombes said.

"That means that mistakes happened, and due to how long these things can take, how long was that worker going through the system without WCB supports?"

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