‘Help me’: These MAID complications challenge the ‘good death’ narrative

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Bradley “Stewie” Stewart — one of six kids, a community-minded man and active member of the little Baptist church and local Legion in Beachville, Ont., who’d rarely missed a day’s work in 47 years with the same company — was diagnosed in 2023 with liver cancer.

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He ultimately chose to die by MAID to avoid the death his father endured. “He thought there was a better way with MAID,” his sister, Cathy Stewart-Mott said.

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Stewart, 67 when he died in September 2024, squeezed every moment he could into the months, even days, leading up to his death.

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He collapsed on a Sunday after attending a car show at the local museum where he’d manned the barbecue every summer for 20 years before he became ill. “That’s when he said to his brothers, ‘I think this might be it,'” Stewart-Mott said.

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MacLean was called to the house three days later, after Stewart had become unresponsive. Stewart was surrounded by his siblings, family members and friends. His three chihuahuas were perched on his bed. MacLean injected midazalom and propofol. But missing from his briefcase was a third drug that paralyzes the muscles and stops breathing. After injecting the propofol, and unable to hear a heartbeat, he pronounced Stewart dead and left.

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Only Stewart resumed breathing. Some in the room noticed “what looked at first like almost imperceptible” breaths that grew stronger, Stewart-Mott said.

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She was in the kitchen when her daughter found her. “Uncle Brad isn’t gone,” she said. “He’s breathing again.”

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MacLean had used a back-up MAID kit; a new one he’d ordered wasn’t ready when he arrived at a pharmacy to collect it.

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Tracey Townsend, another sister, said that when MacLean returned to the house after being called back, “He said something to the effect of, ‘Wow, this has never happened to me before. He’s still breathing?’”

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MacLean administered more medication, including the neuromuscular-blocking drug, and again declared Stewart dead.

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The death had a profound effect on the family. At first, “we couldn’t talk about it,” said Townsend, who had to take a few months leave from work. “Going through MAID and losing somebody twice in a matter of a couple of hours. (It was) too much.”

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“There was shock. There was numbness,” said Stewart-Mott. “People tried to remove themselves from it. ‘Maybe this didn’t happen.’”

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They’re angry that despite finding serious concerns with Maclean’s MAID practice — including a second complaint involving his assessment of a MAID patient outside a Tim Hortons — MacLean wasn’t brought before a disciplinary hearing by his licensing college. Instead, he agreed to a minimum of six months’ clinical supervision, among other voluntary undertakings. He is permitted to continue practising MAID.

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“It literally was a slap on the wrist,” Townsend said.

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“It shocks me because, in a lot of jobs, that’s the kind of action that would have got someone fired and yet they are literally saying it’s remediation,” Stewart-Mott said.

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“They had the ability to suspend his doing MAID but never went down that road.”

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MacLean declined to comment when contacted by National Post last week, citing rules regarding privacy and confidentiality of complaint investigations.

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National Post

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