The Editor:
I'll try to make this as short as possible.
After my mother's only kidney stopped functioning last August, and she was told she would only have a life expectancy of approximately one year, I was amazed that the dialysis unit in Estevan did not have room for more people.
In my urgency I started inquiring why someone with a year left would have no priority. To no avail. My inquiries went nowhere. It was first-come, first-served.
I wrote to the health minister, my local MLA and several others, including this newspaper.
Between my words, and Norm Park's, he put my mother's circumstances out there for everyone to see how well Saskatchewan Health was dealing with another of their decisions that did not include any moral or common sense. Surprisingly, after the story was printed a couple of weeks later, there was a front page story announcing the expansion of the local dialysis unit. The downfall to this was the fact that they were only adding three more machines, which if they continued with only two sessions a day, three days a week, would only make room for six more people.
You can't really call it an expansion when you're adding three machines that they should have opened with since they had built the unit to fit nine machines, but only opened with six.
With this information, I went to Regina to see my mother who had been exiled there because of these decisions. I stopped in to see the social worker in the renal dialysis unit at the General Hospital. I put forth my concern that my mother was No. 7 or 8 on the list and how was the expansion going to help her when she was not being given any different outcome diagnosis from her doctor? The social worker informed me she thought that there were to be more sessions in a day and confirmed this information with the co-worker in the next office. They both informed me that due to the addition of the three new machines and the addition of more daily sessions that everyone on the waiting list for Estevan would go there when the new machines were set up.
A few months later when the expansion was about two weeks from happening, I inquired at the renal unit in Regina when they might be arranging to have my mother transferred home and had they looked into a place for her to live since she still required care? I was given over to a woman who stated that she was the one who scheduled in conjunction with the Estevan administration for the spots and sessions there and that my mother was not scheduled to go. I asked why not and explained the same circumstances as I have here, to which I was told that I had been misinformed and that she was really sorry for that.
I informed her that someone there could tell my mother then, as I had told her she was going home. I would not be the one to break that promise based on their wrong information.
Approximately a month and a half later mother was hospitalized, taken into surgery, but was too weak to recover. I brought her home in an urn.
So, to the Sun Country Health Authority, in conjunction with the Regina General Hospital's renal dialysis unit, administrators thank you for going all the way with the expansion. Not!
To the minister of health, thank you for putting the patient first. Not!
To my local, provincial MLA, thank you for standing up for your constituency. Not!
I would also like to apologize to my wife for writing this, since she stated it would be better left alone. I too, would rather not be confrontational, but I do this for my mother and those others who get swept into a corner exiled and forgotten.
I wonder if an MLA's relative, or a deep pocketed contributor had been in this situation, perhaps the outcome would have been different?
So once again, to all those involved in the short-sighted decisions that were made, the moral common sense ones that were not made I thank you. Not!
Sincerely,
Kirt Dahl
For Delores E. (Dahl) Dowhanuik (Oct. 31, 1936-April 9, 2010).
Estevan
