A hospital patient who was transferred from Winnipeg to Flin Flon, Man. to free up resources for COVID-19 patients worries she may be spending Christmas separated from her family.
Kristina Markus, 48, was moved from Seven Oaks Hospital to a hospital in the northern Manitoba community last week to continue her recovery from a serious illness.
It’s a situation health officials this week warned more patients could find themselves in as hospitals continue to grapple with staffing challenges and the impacts of the pandemic.
Markus, who lives with pulmonary arterial hypertension, has been hospitalized since September when she developed a condition which resulted in her body retaining excess fluid.
Her illness has left her unable to walk and she nearly died in hospital in Winnipeg earlier this year.
“Every time I think about it…it brings me to tears because I think of what I could’ve lost,” Markus said in a phone interview from Flin Flon, nearly 800 kilometres north of her home.
She’s one of several Manitobans who’ve been moved to different health regions amid a rise in COVID-19 cases.
Markus initially thought it would be a three-week hospital stay, but now she worries she may be separated from her family over Christmas.
“I hate to say it but I think I will be,” Markus said. “I’m trying hard not to be. We’re going to work really hard.”
Markus said she was matched with a facility that could continue providing the physiotherapy and care she needs, which in her case happened to be the hospital in Flin Flon.
A Shared Health spokesperson said since the patient transfer policy was implemented two months ago, 62 people have been moved to sites in a different health region — 41 from Winnipeg and 21 from the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority.
“And this is really in efforts to help protect our most specialized and acute beds in the province,” Monika Warren, Shared Health’s executive director of health and acute inpatient services and provincial COVID-19 operations chief, said on Wednesday.
Health officials said COVID-19 patients, most of whom are unvaccinated, are placing additional stress on hospitals and intensive care units and more transfers may be needed.
They also want input from staff on how to stretch resources.
Darlene Jackson, the head of the Manitoba Nurses Union is glad to hear it as long as members are being listened to but she warned resources are limited.
“We are in a critical nursing shortage and you can’t educate a nurse in a day,” Jackson said. “It takes time and it takes effort.”
Adding extra stress to an already truly challenging situation, Markus said she found out late last week she would also soon have to find a new place to live by the end of January.
“On top of everything that happened I got an email from my new landlord saying I needed to move out of my condo because he needed it for his family that was coming in,” Markus said.
Her family is taking care of the move because Markus has no mobility and remains in Flin Flon hospital.
Her condition improved before the transfer but she said she only found out where she was going two hours before it happened
“I had no clothes, I had nothing ready for bill payments or anything like that,” Markus said. “I was at a loss.”
While she doesn’t think it’s fair fully vaccinated patients like herself are moved to different regions to free up space for unvaccinated patients, Markus said hospital staff and people in Flin Flon have been amazing.
She’s received bouquets of flowers and visits from complete strangers.
Her family and friends are already helping her find a place to live for when she’s discharged.
She said staff at the Flin Flon hospital also put her in touch with a social worker from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority who has been assisting her in the search for a new home.
