Care close to home

As Dorothy said in The Wizard of Oz–“There’s no place like home.” And when you’re sick, being cared for close to home seems all the more important, too.
For cancer patients who can receive chemotherapy treatment at La Verendrye hospital here, the surroundings also have taken on the warm “fuzzies” of home.
Chemotherapy treatments are administered in the emergency ward examination room, now brightly-decorated primarily with the cancer patient in mind.
Donna Daub, former emergency ward supervisor, donated a special blanket for the bed, Tracey Morrish painted sunflowers on the blind, while Shopper’s Home Health Care donated a lazy-boy chair.
Interior decorating time was donated by Cheryl Westover and Linda Hamilton.
“We dedicated that room for chemotherapy two years ago and we’ve tried to do our best to make it as [personal] as possible,” noted Daub, now casual supervisor at the hospital.
“We wanted to make it as comfortable as possible, too–the whole goal is for patients to be as close to home as possible,” she stressed. “That’s the big goal, the ultimate goal.”
“Some [cancer patients] are here for eight hours and some are here for half an hour,” noted Marie Saunders, a registered nurse who works the emergency ward.
All emergency nurses carry special certification for the administration of chemotherapy treatments.
In the not too distant future, a new, larger chemo unit will be located inside a two-storey addition to the front of the hospital that’s being built in conjunction with Phase IV renovations there.
“It will be considerably bigger, in a new section, and will have a good view of the river,” said Wayne Woods, CEO of Riverside Health Care Facilities.
“We will have a beautiful room [and] a station for two people to receive chemotherapy at the same time,” noted Daub.
“My treatment meant I had to be admitted to hospital [in Winnipeg],” local cancer survivor Todd Hamilton said earlier this week. “But if I could have had my treatments here, that would have been great.
“A nicely-equipped room that’s comfortable–locally in your own community–I think we should do everything we can to make it happen,” he concluded.