Word on dialysis unit not expected ’til fall

Those waiting to find out whether La Verendrye hospital here will be getting a hemo-dialysis unit anytime soon will have to hold on at least a month, the CEO of Riverside Health Care Facilities said Tuesday.
“I’ve heard nothing at this time,” noted Wayne Woods. “But it will be a political announcement and they’re not sitting [at Queen’s Park] right now.
“We’re still hoping to hear from [the province] by the fall,” he added. “I believe they’ll make it part of a larger announcement–perhaps as part of a province-wide diabetes initiative.”
Riverside is waiting not only to find out if it has the go-ahead to include a dialysis unit into planned renovations for La Verendrye but for some $500,000 in funding to cover the first year of its operating costs.
But Woods said he remains optimistic good news is on the way. The local Aboriginal Dialysis Acquisition Drive already has raised about $500,000 to purchase the unit–an amount Rainy River First Nation Chief Jim Leonard previously had said may be matched by the federal government.
Still, one district woman who’d love to see the hemo-dialysis unit at La Verendrye is starting to get impatient.
“I’ve heard they have the funding in place so what’s the hold-up?” wondered Metta Visser of Emo. “If you were travelling to Thunder Bay three days a week [for dialysis], you’d be asking, too.
“We’ve been travelling like this for half-a-year and it’s getting to be too much. And we don’t want to travel in the winter,” added Visser, who makes the four-hour drive there every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
“[My husband] Richard can find other drivers, but, of course, I always have to go,” she noted.
The Vissers had lived in Thunder Bay for five or so months last year but she said the experience “just wasn’t our cup of tea.”
“We’re country people, I guess,” Visser quipped.
But if a dialysis unit is not made available here soon, the couple may have no choice but to move back to Thunder Bay.
“We don’t want to leave. We have our house, our business, our friends, and our family here,” she lamented. “But if we have no choice . . . .”