The hospital’s rehabilitation centre had closed two years earlier. Pigeau, then in his early 60s, was sent to the local Y to learn about exercise. There was no physiotherapist, no medical help, and no exercise plan, he said, just a meeting with all kinds of people, including healthy adults in skin-baring gear.

“I was humiliated,” he said. So he stopped going. He went back to his Preston home and worked out his own exercises to keep mobile.

More of this is what Cambridge residents can expect as the provincial supervisor moves ahead with a plan to cut $11 million from the hospital’s budget, Pigeau told a public meeting Sunday.

“If you’re going to have a stroke tomorrow, better be careful,” he said. “You don’t get much at the Cambridge hospital.”

Click here to view a previous story about the hospital's cost-cutting plan.  And here.

Click here to view information about the "hospital improvement plan" at www.cmh.org.

Sunday's town hall meeting, organized by the Toronto-based Ontario Health Coalition, attracted about 50 people and half a dozen speakers.

Brenda Pugh, head of the Ontario Nurses Association union at the hospital, said the jobs of 28 registered nurses are being phased out to cut costs.

Every new patient on a registered nurse’s caseload increases the odds by seven per cent of the patient getting complications from illness, she said.

Tara Boyes of the Cambridge Community Breastfeeding Group said it has become more difficult for new mothers to breastfeed their infants successfully since the hospital ended its lactation consultant program last year. The mothers have less access to advice, she said, More babies are losing weight and getting jaundice.

Overwhelmed mothers are more likely to turn to infant formula when they encounter problems, even though it’s well-known that breastfeeding provides infants with protection against a host of illness from infections to obesity.

Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig said cardiac recovery services may be next on the chopping block.

“It’s demoralizing to the population,” he said.

Many Cambridge people won’t get on a bus to get services in Kitchener and Waterloo, he said.