Editor:
In June of 1978 our three-year-old daughter Jennifer was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia (cancer). My wife Vickie and I lived in Clearwater where I taught school. The diagnosis took place at the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops. All three of us were flown to Vancouver for Jennifer to be admitted to the Vancouver General Hospital children’s unit there. Our car was left at the Kamloops airport. We were in total shock. Vickie’s parents lived in Burnaby, but we did not want to leave our only child’s side during this crisis. We stayed at the Plaza 500 on 12th St., quite expensive for a one-income family from faraway Clearwater. Fortunately, a social worker found us rooms in a seniors’ high rise close by. Vickie was free and I paid $10 a night.
For two weeks we were at H3 ward every day while our daughter underwent chemotherapy. At the end of two weeks, Jennifer went into remission. With a sigh of relief, we were able to turn our efforts to other demands like making a trip up to Kamloops Airport to retrieve our car and on to Clearwater to check on the homestead. It was luck for me that I was on summer break from teaching, but many others had jobs so the parents could not be together to face this challenge. As it was, we were able to spend all of July and August together during our daughter’s treatment.
Then came September and I had to return to Clearwater to resume my teaching job. Those were the hardest two weeks of my life, each and every day dreading a call that things were not going well. Thankfully Jennifer survived and is a mother herself today.
This whole ordeal would have been so much easier for us if there had been a cancer clinic in Kamloops. The B.C. interior needs more options for cancer treatment and Kamloops and Prince George are the best locations for such facilities.
I urge the provincial government to fund and establish such facilities as the need is urgent. We wouldn’t wish anyone to go through the experience we had to go through so far away from home.
Wes Morden
Clearwater, B.C.