PITTSFIELD — A Lenox man is heading back to Northampton soon, ready after a year of turmoil to sit in a dental chair and receive the free care he earned by serving with the Marine Corps.
But he’ll be on his guard. And on a mission.
Bruce A. Deloye’s return to a veterans hospital comes after a yearlong fight to get to the bottom of a bad experience he says he suffered during a dental cleaning last August — a matter that’s now one element, however small, in an ongoing federal probe of the quality of care delivered to veterans like Deloye in western Massachusetts.
Even before the Veterans Affairs’ Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection opened an investigation into a former staff doctor’s allegations of substandard care at the institution, Deloye began seeking answers about why he suffered an intense burning sensation in his mouth and throat during a procedure last August.
Deloye, a Pittsfield native who is 81, receives care, like other veterans in Berkshire County, through the Central Western Massachusetts HealthCare System in Northampton.
The sensation occurred as his mouth was being rinsed during the cleaning and lasted about 10 seconds.
“The taste of that stuff was like drinking out of Silver Lake at its worst,” said Deloye, referring to the Pittsfield lake polluted over decades by the General Electric Co. “It was a horrible burning experience. Who knows what was in that line.”
He set out to uncover what happened. “I want to be a whistleblower,” Deloye said.
Officials with the Northampton VA say Deloye’s experience was limited and has not occurred again, though one other patient reported a “bad taste” in his mouth while receiving care in Dental Treatment Room 1242.
Deloye’s quest for answers won him audiences with VA officials, including Director John P. Collins, and help from staff in the office of U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield. In late June, Neal informed Deloye by letter that his case has been referred to federal authorities investigating the facility.
The newly created whistleblower office continues to look into claims that the late Dr. Sarah Kemble detailed in a 23-page affidavit. Five days before dying of cancer in December, Kemble also had testified to the whistleblower unit.
Kemble flagged what she saw as problems with the Northampton VA’s care in her three years there. Among her concerns: inadequate staffing, bad communication that led to delays in care and access by patients to illegal drugs.
Andre Bowser, spokesman for the Northampton VA, said the institution is cooperating “fully” with the federal investigation and said staff there are committed to providing high-quality care for veterans.
“This is all the information we have that is releasable at this time,” he said in an email.
Within days of his Aug. 24 dental clinic visit, Deloye contacted Neal’s office, detailing in a handwritten, one-page letter what he had experienced. He said the cleaning seemed to be going routinely until about 10 minutes in, when he used a tube that provided liquid for rinsing.
He wrote that his mouth began to burn and he swallowed “what tasted like, for lack of a better description, chemical waste.”
Deloye asked the dental hygienist what was happening. On leaving, he ran into the head of the clinic, Dr. Amit Sharma, and described his experience. Like the hygienist, Sharma said the liquid was distilled water.
“I demand to know what I swallowed,” Deloye wrote. “I don’t want this to happen to any other vets, and I don’t want a VA coverup to occur.”
Deloye suggested in his original statement to the VA that a cleaning agent might have been present in the line supplying the rinse water. He wrote that he was sharing his statement with Neal’s office and with the veterans’ agent in Pittsfield.
Deloye also had spoken again with Sharma, the Northampton VA’s chief of dental services, who explained that, due to changes nationally, the facility used a new system employing suction and a water spray, rather than the old-style “cuspidor” system in which patients spit rinse water into bowls.
After getting Deloye’s statement, Cynthia Clark, a staff member in Neal’s Pittsfield office, referred the matter to the Northampton VA’s director in a Sept. 5 letter.
According to the VA, Sharma already had promised Deloye that he would have the cleaning system tested. That happened Sept. 6 — with no problems found by a unit called the Bio-Medical Equipment support group.
In a response to the letter from Clark, Dennis R. Ramstein of the Northampton VA said the tests examined the exam chair as well as air and water connections in tubing in the room where Deloye had been treated. Ramstein, a public affairs officer, said the inspection group also contacted the maker of the chair.
It found that “there is no chance of cross contamination of any of the air, water, or suction lines used,” Ramstein wrote. He said tests run every three months also had not found any contamination.
“To date we have found no errors in our dental equipment and have had no other complaints of the sort expressed by Mr. Deloye,” he wrote.
Ramstein told Clark that Deloye’s experience led the clinic to begin stocking water bottles so patients can rinse their mouths. He said the clinic is now purging all lines for four minutes after each cleaning instead of the 30 seconds recommended by the manufacturer.
Clark then relayed those findings to Deloye in a Sept. 27 letter. But Deloye remained unconvinced.
He later learned that another veteran had reported having a “bad taste” during a procedure.
In October, Deloye spoke again with Sharma, after the dentist called him to check in. According to medical records that Deloye made available to The Eagle, the dentist logged that he had told the patient Oct. 17 the taste could have been the “highly diluted” sodium hypochlorite the clinic used to clean a device known as an ultrasonic scaler. That implement is used in dental cleanings.
Sharma said the scaler had been disconnected from the chair and the VA was ordering equipment so the device could be employed “without using the connections of the chair. Informed him that this was the reason he might have had a chemical taste in his mouth.”
The entry closes, “Veteran thanked me and seemed happy.”
Ramstein, who serves as outreach coordinator for the local VA, said Sharma told Deloye about the second patient’s experience, which came several days after the chair and equipment had been inspected, “in the spirit of complete transparency.”
The second patient did not file an official complaint, Ramstein said.
“The issue was determined to also be associated with the change to suction for removal of dental hygiene byproduct,” he said, in response to questions about the issue, “rather than the previous rinse and spit routine. There have been no complaints of this nature since.”
The chair in Room 1242 remains in use as before, Ramstein said.
But Deloye says a patient advocate who works for the VA told him the chair had been taken out of service, leading him to think that he had not yet gotten the whole story.
On Feb. 9, Deloye met for nearly an hour with Collins, the VA director. At Deloye’s side was Phil Prew, a lifelong friend with whom he rode a bus south to boot camp in 1954.
Though assured that tests of the dental clinic equipment had been performed eight months earlier, with no problems found, Deloye felt he wasn’t getting straight answers.
Along the way, a patient advocate who had provided early advice, and had told him about the second patient, stopped returning his calls, Deloye said.
Because Deloye didn’t want to return to Northampton for dental care, the VA helped him get an appointment with a private practice in North Adams.
“This thing is snowballing into a nightmare,” Deloye said in a May interview at The Eagle, as Prew listened.
“Now it’s grown into something bigger,” said Prew.
Deloye’s own medical record now records his emotional odyssey — as well as occasional flashes of temper.
“Veteran in clinic to vent about the frustration and anger he feels,” a nurse’s Oct. 16 note reads. “Mr. Deloye said that he is angry and disappointed at the [Northampton] hospital director’s staff — all of whom appear to be ignoring his concerns.”
“He said that he has made it his personal mission [to get answers and an explanation from the facility leadership. Vet said his goal is to advocate not just for himself but so the same mishap does not happen to [other] veterans receiving dental services.”
The next day, the same registered nurse, Dina Malone, saw Deloye and logged into the medical record that Deloye was upset and exhibiting “hyperfocus” and “perservation of thought” in the way he spoke repeatedly and insistently about his inquiry into his dental experience.
“Veteran’s perception of being ignored by VA leadership,” Malone wrote, “seem[s] to have triggered ongoing state of anger (self proclaimed [being] ‘like a pitbull dog’ unwilling to let go of the matter at hand) thereby continually pursuing all possible avenues toward reinvestigation of the subject.”
Though he still harbored doubts about what actually happened in the dental clinic, Deloye felt he was accomplishing something just by reaching out. He expanded his efforts, including calls to the office of Sen. Edward Markey.
That feeling was confirmed when he learned his case had been referred last month by Neal’s office to investigators.
“Without pressures, the system will never change,” Deloye said in a recent interview, reflecting on his months of advocacy. “We’ve had so many directors of the VA. It’s the same old machine. If there’s enough pressure applied, the system will change.”
But the former Marine still feels it’s an uphill fight. He wonders if he’ll hear from authorities alerted by Neal’s office.
“After that letter, nothing,” he said. “No one has contacted me.”
Jim Clark, Pittsfield’s director of veterans services, believes Deloye advocated for himself well over the past year. Though Clark says his own care through the VA has been “top notch,” others have had experiences that warrant review.
“I think he really got the answers,” Clark said of Deloye. “It wasn’t just for himself. It was for other veterans who went there. He wasn’t a lone duck.
“All the right people were put into play. He went through all the right steps,” Clark said. “I think he’s happy with where he got.”
As the anniversary of his dental visit nears, Deloye is going back to Northampton, in part because imaging shows a “shadow” on his jaw that needs to be evaluated.
“We’re worried about cancer of the jaw, but I don’t think I have it,” Deloye said.
The fact that Deloye is coming back for an oral surgery consultation in August, Ramstein told The Eagle, is evidence that trust has been rebuilt.
Deloye acknowledges that progress has been made. He said Sharma, the VA dental chief, has been responsive.
“They’ve been going overboard for me,” he said of the VA.
But when Deloye goes to Northampton, he’ll have a few items in tow.
“I said ‘I’ll bring my own water and my own spittoon,’” Deloye said.