Erika Snelgrove has been grieving for months.
Snelgrove says her father, 59-year-old Danny Deagle, died from septic shock on Dec. 7, 2025, just two days after being sent home from the emergency department at Dartmouth General Hospital.
Snelgrove believes if more testing had been done, the outcome might have been different.
“If bloodwork was done in his initial visit, which was the bare minimum when you have a 59-year-old with diabetes and underlying health issues, ruling out an infection, now that I’m more educated, that’s something that should’ve happened,” she said from her Bedford, N.S., home on Wednesday.
Snelgrove says she first brought her father to the hospital in a wheelchair on Dec. 5, saying he was suffering from a fever and severe back pain for a week.
After waiting eight hours in the ER, she says he struggled to move onto the examination table.
Snelgrove claims he wasn’t seen by a doctor before being discharged, and says the nurse advised her she contact their family physician for an X-ray.
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Two days later, she received a devastating call.
“I get a phone call at five o’clock in the morning that my dad’s heart had stopped three times,” she said. “He had had a seizure, that’s why the ambulance had come, he had a seizure that Friday night. And then (it) had escalated to his heart, stopping three times, and he had to be resuscitated.”
He was suffering from a staphylococcus blood infection, she says, before dying of sepsis.
“My dad might have had at least more of a fighting chance. And I’ll never know,” she said, reflecting on his Dec. 5 hospital visit.
In a statement to Global News, Nova Scotia Health Authority says every patient is triaged to assess the severity of conditions.
“As a patient’s condition changes, reassessment can occur and prioritization may be adjusted,” the statement reads.
“Nova Scotia Health has prioritized how we identify and treat sepsis in every zone.”
A critical care physician and scientific director for Sepsis Canada says blood work plays an important role in detecting sepsis. She also says time is of the essence when symptoms occur.
“Most of the tests that we do for identifying if somebody has sepsis, that is, looking for the signs of organ dysfunction, require bloodwork,” said Dr. Alison Fox-Robichaud.
As Snelgrove flips through her photo album, she says she hopes that by speaking out about her father’s death, it will keep his memory alive and help deliver change.
“I know he was very proud of me and that I’m gonna take this life experience and do the best I could with it, with what he’s given me, and I feel like that’s the greatest way to honour what he’s done,” she said.
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