Flood­ing debris lit­ter­ing and clos­ing the Trans Canada High­way in Can­more, Alberta

This is the detailed account to the best of my knowl­edge, of the events since the flood began.

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Last Wednes­day evening Kevin and I were awake most of the night, lis­ten­ing to the unusual down­pour of water — steady, fast and tor­ren­tial. The only time I’d seen rain like that before was in Haida Gwaii last year — in a coastal rain­for­est, cer­tainly never in the dry fron­tranges of the Alberta rockies.

Nor­mally, we are very early ris­ers. The dark dawn of June 20^th that marked Kevin’s 39^th birth­day was no dif­fer­ent as he headed into work in Cal­gary at 4:30 am. I received a text from him not long after he’d left, let­ting me know that the rain was so bad, there were block­ages on the high­way just east of us near Deadman’s Flats and gravel was wash­ing over the high­way. He won­dered if he should turn back home. I turned to social media and this is what I found from a friend liv­ing across the valley:

I quickly let Kevin know and asked him to turn back. Look­ing fur­ther, I saw that there were just a few more post­ings but no other sig­nif­i­cant media cov­er­age. Check­ing Twit­ter, CRPS Bus Ser­vice con­firmed school was closed and a State of Emer­gency had been declared. Oh boy.

Ben was awake, and he and I decided to go out in the early morn­ing dawn to see just what was going on in our imme­di­ate neigh­bour­hood. We took some video and were amazed at what was hap­pen­ing around us. There were very few cars out that early, and we saw no emer­gency or infra­struc­ture vehi­cles. It was deadly quiet, except for the sounds of the rain and the river.

Here’s a cobbled-together video of the footage Ben and I took around town on the morn­ing of June 20^th, between 5:30 and 7:00 am.

When Ben and I were out film­ing, Kevin called to let us know that the Trans Canada was closed and that he was trapped on the other side of the moun­tains, at the Stoney Nakoda Casino exit.

Thurs­day morn­ing was my “chemo prep day”. I was sched­uled to have my final 6^th chemo deliv­ered on Fri­day, June 21^st. As such, the nor­mal pro­ce­dure is to have blood­work done the day prior to chemo deliv­ery to ensure blood counts are at a level that will be safe. Nor­mal pro­ce­dure calls for the chemo drugs are then mixed once blood­work has cleared at the local hos­pi­tal and we’re off and run­ning for the fol­low­ing morn­ing. There are also a few drugs that are given ahead of time (potent steroids) to ensure that your body doesn’t react too ter­ri­bly. For me, the steroids them­selves are awful.

Prior to set­ting off to the hos­pi­tal around 9:00, I called to ask if they were oper­a­tional and it was okay to come in and get the blood­work done…the answer then was yes. I stopped and filled up with gas, and went into Sobey’s to pick up my pre and post-chemo med­ica­tions, includ­ing the $2800 Neu­lasta shot that I would need the day fol­low­ing chemo. While I was there, the power went out in Sobeys. Our amaz­ing phar­ma­cist Scott filled my pre­scrip­tions and told me not to worry — come back later and set­tle up. What a guy! Most peo­ple wan­der­ing around there had no idea what was going on in town. I’m glad I’m an early riser.

Head­ing over to the hos­pi­tal, it seemed like busi­ness as usual. There was a small amount of flood­ing in the park­ing lot but noth­ing major and a pump hose was run­ning from the hos­pi­tal. I got my blood­work com­pleted, and was told I’d hear as nor­mal around noon if we were a “go” for chemo on Fri­day — at this point, the “go” was all on me — i.e. Were my blood lev­els and white counts all safe? Shortly around noon, I received the all clear and was told to come in as usual between 9–9:30 for my chemo on Fri­day morn­ing. I admit hav­ing doubts that hos­pi­tal staff seemed as aware of the situation.

As the day wore on, we could see that things were get­ting worse. Peo­ple were los­ing their homes on the other side of the river, and check­ing in with each other via phone and social media. I was wor­ried about chemo on Fri­day, and think­ing about Kevin being stuck and our fam­ily being sep­a­rated — all the usual logis­tics of how we han­dle these days, and what con­tin­gency plans we needed to make, given the flood­ing cir­cum­stances. He tried every way he could to get a way through, but the 1A was also closed and washed out. Finally, he quickly grabbed a room at the Stoney/Nakoda casino and dug in for the day.

The rain con­tin­ued to pour and I and oth­ers spent a lot of time on Face­book and Twit­ter get­ting updates, pass­ing along infor­ma­tion and shar­ing evac­u­a­tion infor­ma­tion with friends here in Can­more. I’m so grate­ful for every­one who kept look­ing in on us and check­ing to see that we were okay. So many peo­ple vol­un­teered to drive me to chemo for Fri­day and ensure that I got there. Some­one even vol­un­teered to get me a heli­copter if Three Sis­ters Park­way closed. There were heli­copters fly­ing every­where and rumour has it that some of them were fly­ing ille­gally, tak­ing tourists from spots around town in Can­more out of the flood zone for exhor­bi­tant amounts of money. In my heart, I couldn’t believe that I was think­ing that I was WISHING for this poi­son to be deliv­ered to me. It’s been such a dif­fi­cult jour­ney and so hard on my body, I’d rather for­get about the whole thing like a bad dream.

Pho­tos and reports of ter­ri­ble flood­ing in High River started flow­ing in — another satel­lite area where chemo is deliv­ered for area res­i­dents. Friends posted videos and pho­tos of the other side of the val­ley in Can­more by Cougar Creek where peo­ple were los­ing houses, and we all felt so ter­ri­ble. Footage that friend Wade Cameron shot from his back­yard at Cougar Creek:

The dex­am­etha­sone steroids kicked in with fero­cious tenac­ity by 1 pm on Thurs­day and I was wired right through until 3 am on Fri­day. The only good thing about this was that I could watch news, dis­sem­i­nate news and alerts faster than nor­mal. The kids were all a lit­tle ner­vous and Grace espe­cially was stressed and wor­ried for her Dad. My kids were rocks.

Fri­day morn­ing dawned and Kevin called me to say he could see from his hotel room win­dow that some cars and vehi­cles were being let through on the Trans Canada High­way, so he was going to go and see if they would allow him to come through and get here as pri­mary care­giver for me dur­ing chemo. Lucky us…he was let through and care­fully made his way along the bro­ken and bat­tered TCH. Here’s some of what he saw early Fri­day morning:

Washed out Trans Canada High­way, east of Can­more, Alberta due to flooding

I received a call from the Can­more hos­pi­tal at 8:30 say­ing that they would not be deliv­er­ing my chemo because the base­ment of the hos­pi­tal had flooded and the drugs did not get mixed because a spe­cial hood under which they are mixed was dam­aged. I called my oncologist’s nurse at the Tom Baker, con­cerned and want­ing to be able to assess what this would mean for me if there was a delay in my chemother­apy and to see if I could rearrange it. I was told that a cou­ple of days would be okay, but that longer than that, it would lower the effi­cacy and there­fore my care­fully cal­cu­lated “chances” of sur­vival. I was feel­ing a bit of dread around this. A bit? That’s an understatement.

After the mas­tec­tomy and 5 gru­elling rounds of chemo, this was my last one…the big BANG. I’d be warned ear­lier in the week that this round would be harder on me than the pre­vi­ous rounds, and had done every­thing I needed to in order to pre­pare my body and mind for the onslaught and bru­tal side effects. Every­thing from inter­nal type chem­i­cal burns on my hand to severe and extreme bone, mus­cle and joint pain, fever…I’ve expe­ri­enced the bad side of Doc­etaxel. I’ve even had thoughts of not hav­ing my last chemo, but want to take the best shot I can at life! Who wouldn’t?

Just one side effect of chemo — inter­nal “chem­i­cal” burns to my hands.

Kevin arrived home and I was ever so happy to see him. The phone rang again and it was the Can­more hos­pi­tal call­ing back…they could INDEED deliver my chemo so please come on down. We grabbed our rub­ber boots and rain jack­ets and just as we were dri­ving away, the Can­more hos­pi­tal called us again to say that they now could NOT deliver it. What a hor­ri­ble see-saw. I asked to speak to some­one in charge and was handed over to an admin­is­tra­tor at the Can­more hos­pi­tal. I asked why now it could not be deliv­ered and she could not pro­vide a log­i­cal answer to me. The doc­tor, nurse…everything was there and appar­ently the phar­ma­cist was given per­mis­sion to mix up the drugs in a dif­fer­ent area of the hos­pi­tal. The admin­is­tra­tor lost her patience with me and hung up on the phone. (I admit…I’m like a dog with a bone when I’m look­ing for answers and being hung up on is some­thing I’ve become accus­tomed to. I get it and am not offended.) We kept dri­ving to the hos­pi­tal, think­ing that a face to face inves­ti­ga­tion at this point was in order so that we could assess for our­selves and receive an ade­quate expla­na­tion for this yo-yo ride. I was not ready to take “no” for an answer.…but I did need some sort of log­i­cal answer and believe that I, as well as any patient fac­ing this kind of cir­cum­stance, should deserve. Just some respect.

We were able to get into the hos­pi­tal — no prob­lem at all, although there was quite a bit of water on the roads sur­round­ing it. When we arrived, it was very quiet. I asked the two recep­tion staff if there was an addi­tional state of emer­gency in place that would cause any non-delivery and they indi­cated that no…things were very quiet and they had not been noti­fied of any­thing. Kevin and I pro­ceeded to the can­cer care clinic area and found our chemo nurse there. I announced that I was here for my chemo and she told me that she was not allowed to deliver the ser­vice.  I was not sur­prised at this answer, and asked who I needed to speak with for fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion as to why. I was pointed in the direc­tion of the hos­pi­tal administrator’s office.

Me…June 25^th, 2013

The admin­is­tra­tor ush­ered us into the board­room and I asked her why it was that things had changed so quickly and why chemo could not be deliv­ered, since we were aware that a) the chemo nurse was present b) the doc­tor was avail­able c) we had infor­ma­tion that the drug could be safely mixed on site. Despite all man­ner of ques­tions, she was unable to give us a log­i­cal answer. She told us that maybe our nurse was needed to help pre­pare lunches for the cur­rent 60 res­i­dents. Really? Wow…this is a rea­son chemo can’t be deliv­ered? Kevin and I both offered to help do that or get vol­un­teers to help if they were short-staffed. She was just not mak­ing sense to us at all. She told us there were 60 patients cur­rently there, with 100 staff. That’s a pretty high ratio, I’d say. After a bit, she admit­ted that she needed to take a break so we waited for her to return.….tick.…tock.….tick.….tock.…..

She returned with our chemo nurse and another staff mem­ber. We again asked the same ques­tions, but were not given a log­i­cal answer. We offered to try and con­tact other higher offi­cials and were told that they were in fact “fly­ing over top of us right now”. The other staff mem­ber, who was not intro­duced then told us, “We know things we can’t tell you.”

Right. That’s the best way to trig­ger my Oliver Stone reflex, chicklet.

I told her that in fact, the sit­u­a­tion was one that was affect­ing my treat­ment, life expectancy, etc.…and likely that of oth­ers, so if there was some­thing that they needed to tell us…they needed to tell us. They would not, how­ever be forth­com­ing with us, and we left the meeting.

I like things that make sense. Give me the rea­son why some­thing can’t hap­pen, and I’m the first one to accept it and try to find a solu­tion to the prob­lem. Tell me that there’s some­thing that you can’t tell me.…I’m on that like a dog. It’s dis­re­spect­ful and that hits hard on my own core values.

I let go of it for a day…trying to fig­ure out what exactly was going on at the hos­pi­tal, but didn’t see any high alerts, evac­u­a­tions or any­thing. I did see a need for help in my neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties of Mor­ley and Sik­sika so spent a day try­ing to get media to pay atten­tion to the flood­ing and home­less in both of those com­mu­ni­ties. Buy the end of Sat­ur­day, I’d Face­booked, Twit­tered and social-mediaed myself into exhaus­tion. Ever grate­ful that Dea Fis­cher and the crew at the Can­more Legion picked up the ball when my energy went south and orga­nized sup­plies to be deliv­ered the fol­low­ing day.

Sun­day morn­ing found us tak­ing 18 truck­loads of goods out to Mor­ley. Yeah! It felt good to be occu­pied and help out, and thank good­ness the steroids were still keep­ing me pumped up. Com­mu­nity suc­cesses buoy me onwards…how about you?

Food Ham­pers packed for deliv­ery to the Stoney/Nakoda com­mu­nity at Morley

Vol­un­teers hard at work at the Can­more Legion, sort­ing and pack­ing donated goods for redis­tri­b­u­tion to those in need.

18 Truck­loads of sup­plies, water, cloth­ing, food and sta­ples deliv­ered to Mor­ley by Can­more volunteers

Alli­son Poucette and Erica Ryder, strong women com­mu­nity lead­ers and vol­un­teers from the Stoney/Nakoda Nation

I was priv­i­leged to have spent almost six years as the Pro­gram Man­ager for Indige­nous Lead­er­ship at The Banff Cen­tre. Dur­ing that time, I met many lead­ers and com­mu­nity mem­bers from First Nations, Métis and Inuit com­mu­ni­ties from across Canada. What has always inspired me is the resilience, sense of humour, deter­mi­na­tion, resource­ful­ness and exu­ber­ance when faced with adver­sity. This time around, I see incred­i­ble team­work and lead­er­ship in my neigh­bour­ing First Nations com­mu­ni­ties of Mor­ley and Sik­sika. My heart goes out to all of you, as I know first-hand that your chal­lenges are greater than those off-reserve in reg­u­lar times, never mind times of cri­sis and devastation.

A friend sent this to remind me to care for myself so that I could care for others.

By the end of day, I was exhausted and col­lapsed into bed…thoughts turned again to myself and my fam­ily and I began think­ing again about my can­cer treat­ment and what impact this was going to have per­son­ally, on my own life and mortality.

Mon­day dawned after a rest­less night, and again I began con­tem­plat­ing my own par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion. The longer I thought about it, the more con­cerned I became, think­ing about the dev­as­ta­tion to infra­struc­ture all across the south­ern part of the province and con­cerned about how offi­cials would be pri­or­i­tiz­ing ser­vices. It’s scary to see rail­ways being fixed imme­di­ately, and dec­la­ra­tions of “Stam­pede Will Hap­pen Come Hell or High Water” when you can’t get the med­i­cines to get you bet­ter. Hmmm.…something amiss with this triage, methinks.

I called into the Can­more hos­pi­tal to see if they had any­thing planned or sched­uled and was told that no…not yet…but they would get back to me. I was told that it would be two weeks before the hood to mix the chem­i­cals would be fixed. I admit crawl­ing back into bed and hav­ing a lit­tle cry, try­ing to absorb what this meant to our fam­ily. By the after­noon, I picked myself up again I got on  social media  and began tweet­ing about ques­tions for can­cer and chemo deliv­ery. The story started to get picked up by oth­ers and peo­ple began to ask ques­tions. I was happy to hear this. I’m very thank­ful to Kim Castle­berry and Paul Thomp­son as well as CTV, Global, CBC and the Cal­gary Her­ald for respond­ing quickly and ask­ing ques­tions about my par­tic­u­lar cir­cum­stance and story. They in turn, retweeted to the Min­is­ter of Health and other author­i­ties. By shar­ing our sto­ries, we can get to the bot­tom and ulti­mately find the com­mon points we are all con­cerned with…and fix the darned mess — if not for this time, then the next. There was a rather ugly “troll” telling me to drive to Edmon­ton and get off Twitter…to quit complaining.…yikes…pffft. Boy, peo­ple can get ugly.

A few hours later, I got a call from a lady at Alberta Health Ser­vices that they would arrange to have my chemo mixed at the Tom Baker in Cal­gary and deliv­ered to Can­more by courier mid-morning Wednes­day so that I could receive my treat­ment. Wow. GREAT! She rushed off the line at 4:30 to ensure the orders for the drugs were received by the phar­macy. Phew.

Then I got thinking…what about all the OTHER patients? Who was going to do the same for them? What was going on in High River for the can­cer cen­tre patients there? What was hap­pen­ing for those at Holy Cross in Cal­gary which was closed down. At this time, I still don’t have those answers and I don’t know for sure if every­one else in Can­more who should be get­ting their doses tomorrow…will get their treatments.

For the future, this is some­thing that we really have to con­sider. With the Tom Baker Can­cer cen­tre at or over capac­ity under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, it con­cerns me that in times of dis­as­ter and stress, that there are poten­tially more lives being put at stake than need be.

Here are a few sug­ges­tions to the province and Alberta Health Ser­vices to avoid this in the future:

1. Put ade­quate back-up plans in place to ensure no can­cer patient’s treat­ment is delayed. Zero tolerance.
2. Empower hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tion to ade­quately address emer­gency cir­cum­stances with patients in a timely and orga­nized man­ner. “I can’t tell you the secret that I know.” does not help or instill con­fi­dence in the system.
3. Deliver lead­er­ship and cri­sis train­ing to address these concerns.
4. Improve com­mu­ni­ca­tions regard­ing health care in emer­gency situations.
5. If chem­i­cal trans­port isn’t pos­si­ble due to haz­ardous mate­r­ial restric­tions, a plan for how patients can get added to treat­ment ros­ters in Cal­gary or the near­est deliv­ery site to their location.

That’s all I can write at this time on this sub­ject. I’m bushed and the media has been call­ing (thank you for get­ting the story). The steroids are now rac­ing through my veins, mak­ing me a lit­tle odd-headed so I daren’t write more at this time. I will update on this post as I find out more infor­ma­tion and I hope that in shar­ing my story thus far will help some­one else. Thank you to all those who have helped get things in place and keep work­ing hard to ensure this won’t hap­pen again.

“Stam­pede can wait.…a can­cer patient can­not weather hell and high water.”

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UPDATE: June 27, 2013 — Chemo Deliv­ered to Me on June 26^th, 2013

At 9:00 am yes­ter­day, I received a call from my chemo nurse at the Can­more Hos­pi­tal. She said that they antic­i­pated the Doc­etaxel to be deliv­ered around noon, so to please come in around 10:30 — 11:00 to start the addi­tional pre-chemo meds. They deliver a hefty IV steroid and Benadryl to counter-act the tox­i­c­ity and aller­gic affects of this highly toxic drug. I hadn’t slept much the night before because of the oral pre-steroids, and was feel­ing a bit shakey. Kevin missed yet another day of work to take me. That’s a total of five days of missed work because of the flood and delays in chemo, which is hard on our fam­ily finan­cially. My daugh­ter Grace has been affected by the events of the last few days and has been stick­ing very close to me. She wanted to come and be with me for this last round. I admit I wanted her there too — she, the boys and Kevin is why I’m doing all of this. I have to admit I’d be happy to face my time, if that’s what the Cre­ator has set for my path.

My chemo nurse Isabelle has been with me through all of this, and I have to admire her care of our fam­ily, her pro­fes­sion­al­ism and will­ing­ness to do any­thing and every­thing she can to ensure my best health. I was very happy to see her after the stress­ful inci­dents over the week­end. We got all set up — she wor­ries about find­ing a vein for me. I have only one arm that can be used, as the mas­tec­tomy surgery took place on my right side — the arm that I use to paint, which…sadly, I still can’t get quite work­ing prop­erly yet. I have high hopes that will all set­tle in time for me, and I can begin to get some of my thoughts out artis­ti­cally on what this jour­ney has meant to me.

On a side-not for con­tin­u­ing mess-ups in Can­more, the doc­tor who was sup­posed to be in atten­dance at the clinic yes­ter­day did not show up. I was told that he had a meet­ing in Edmon­ton in the morn­ing, and then took the Jasper Park­way to get through to Can­more. Um.…the road between Banff and Can­more was closed to only the Roam bus traf­fic at the time, so I have NO idea where this guy’s head is at  - cer­tainly not focussed on my care…and I’m glad that he wasn’t there…although pro­to­col says he must be present in the clinic when this drug is being admin­is­tered. What a fool­ish man. This is the same guy who I talked to three rounds ago to express how bad the side effects were on my hands and arms, and that I wasn’t able to paint. He had the audac­ity to say…well, can you paint with your left hand? Really dude?…both arms are affected. Grow a pair of ears that work.

A deci­sion was made to allow my chemo  to go because there was a doc­tor present in emer­gency, and two nurses were avail­able. Whew.…but accord­ing to hos­pi­tal admin on Friday.…that was a MUST…and that was all in place then. See? These are the incon­sis­ten­cies in pro­to­col and pro­ce­dures that must be addressed in order to keep us all safe. I take some weird com­fort in the fact that CBC was busy tex­ting me dur­ing all this try­ing to know for sure if it was going…or not.

Soak­ing my hands in ice water in hopes of reliev­ing neu­ropa­thy and inter­nal chem­i­cal burns caused to my hands. We never know if this will work, but we try…and yes, it hurts a lot!

I did not see any other chemo patients in the clinic in Can­more yes­ter­day, and I am hop­ing that every­one who needs this ser­vice is get­ting it in a very timely man­ner. This report below from Global states that all the other patients have been moved to Cal­gary and Leth­bridge for their chemo treat­ments. This wor­ries me, and I will try to con­tinue to fol­low up with my rec­om­men­da­tions for patient advo­cacy as the months in front unfold. We can all do bet­ter in the deliv­ery of our care, and we can­not just leave it to Alberta Health Ser­vices, the doc­tors and nurses to advo­cate on our behalf. They’re busy try­ing to deliver the ser­vices. We must be pro-active and solution-oriented as pri­vate cit­i­zens and I believe, con­tinue to part­ner with pri­vate fund­ing sources and gov­ern­ment to ensure the fund­ing flows into the areas that it is required, and not hap­haz­ardly applied.

Sys­tem designs, ade­quate con­tin­gency plan­ning, train­ing and sup­port for lead­ers in cri­sis man­age­ment should be a para­mount pri­or­ity. So, while we’re all busy in the hon­ey­moon phase slap­ping every­one on the backs for the vol­un­teerism and close calls.…it’s also very impor­tant to high­light gap dif­fi­cul­ties and ensure that they are addressed both at the sys­temic and human level. We never know if the next storm­cloud is just on the hori­zon, and Alberta could not han­dle a repeat of this event in the next month. June (flood month)…still isn’t over.

I have to say how pleased I am that the media picked up this story and dug hard to find out the facts about those affected by the clo­sures and the flood. All major net­works con­nected with me to ask the right ques­tions, and I appre­ci­ate their will­ing­ness in a time of a mil­lion crit­i­cal sto­ries, to fil­ter through and tell this one.  I don’t feel this story is about me. It’s about all the can­cer patients in Alberta who are doing their best to fight this ter­ri­ble dis­ease and even worse cura­tive path to health. I’m thank­ful to Global  and Heather Yourex for air­ing a good seg­ment and hear­ing Dr. Craig­head state that the Tom Baker Clinic has been over-capacity for ten years is a pow­er­ful fact. Apolo­gies for the shaky vid…using what tech we have at the moment.

I am less pleased, but not sur­prised by the spin-doctored press release from Alberta Health Ser­vices  of July 25^th, 2013 stat­ing how won­der­fully Can­more Hos­pi­tal per­formed dur­ing the flood­ing. In my opin­ion and from our per­sonal expe­ri­ence there are incor­rect state­ments in here stated by hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tor Barb Shel­lian which I hope she will find the courage to cor­rect. I stand by my rec­om­men­da­tions listed above and pledge to keep doing as much as I can through my own health chal­lenges to ensure Alber­tan can­cer patients receive the best and most timely care that is possible.

As things stand for me per­son­ally now, this delay has untold, unstud­ied effects on the effi­cacy of my treat­ment and I will for­ever have the ques­tion in my mind that if…just if they had deliv­ered on time, it would make a dif­fer­ence to me in the long run. My radi­a­tion now is pushed out to the end of July, and our fam­ily will be deal­ing not only with those treat­ment trav­els back and forth to Cal­gary, but another 6 week recov­ery after the radi­a­tion treat­ments into Sep­tem­ber. If things had gone as planned, we may have been able to make some impor­tant trips to Haida Gwaii to see the first pole raised in 130 years in the Gwaii Haanas Park area, but that will now have to wait. As such, plans for my sec­ond mas­tec­tomy will be longer now, not even con­sid­er­ing in some other issues they’ve found along the way. For now, we will con­tinue to go day by day. Today, I will receive my painful Neu­lasta shot this after­noon which will lay me out for a cou­ple of weeks. Thank you all again for your help and support.

I am for­ever grate­ful for your will­ing­ness to engage in being beau­ti­ful Full Time Human Beings, warts and all.