Drew Cumpson is waiting for surgery that would allow him to live without a ventilator.

In 2011 Cumpson went to Peru on a humanitarian trip with the University of Guelph. He worked in shanty towns, doing immunizations and helping build a staircase up a steep mountain for the community. On the last day of the trip, he and the other students went to the beach.

“I was in the water body surfing, and one of the large waves took me, crashed me off the ocean floor with my head hitting first, fracturing my C4 vertebrae” he explained.

The accident left Cumpson a quadriplegic, and dependent on a ventilator to breathe.

“Water was not something that was foreign to me. I lived on a lake, I swam all the time… It was a total fluke accident that couldn’t be avoided.”

Fellow U of G students on the trip pulled him from the water and performed CPR. He spent a few days at a clinic in Lima, Peru before being airlifted back to his hometown of Kingston. He spent seven months in the ICU at Kingston General Hospital. He was then moved to a rehab facility in Toronto.

At the moment, he can only go home once every two weeks.

“Right now the government does not allow me to have enough care hours to move home. They will only give me right now 21 hours of nursing care, 21 hours of PSW care, and a possible 186 hours of PSW care that is a four year waiting list.”

There is a device that Health Canada approved last year that could help. A Diaphragm Pacing System works with internal electrodes that stimulate the diaphragm, making it contract and allowing the patient to breathe on their own.

The device costs $35,000 and is covered by OHIP, but Cumpson says that repeated requests to the government about the surgery have gone unanswered for more than six months.

“The government is supposed to fund it, but we have been searching and searching and searching for funding and no one seems to be willing to go about that… We've been trying to get the different medical networks to try and figure out where this money is supposed to coming from. No one seems to be helping us figure that out.”

CTV contracted the Ontario Ministry of Health, and they responded saying “OHIP also insures all medically necessary diagnostic services and hospital costs associated with the surgery including the cost of any implanted devices." 

Cumpson is frustrated that CTV got an answer before he did. His focus now is to find a hospital to perform the surgery, so he can get back to his life, and head back to school full time.

“In January of 2013 I started back at University of Guelph to finish my degree… My goal is to graduate in the spring of 2016.”