We’ve made it to Ottawa, which still isn’t to the ½ way point!  Nonetheless, it is very scenic here and the weather is decent. 

We stood on the street corner near a public market and did our usual thing.  We did pretty well since we earned about $400.00.  Not too bad for a days work of hugging and passing out information.

I didn’t know how hard it was going to be to raise awareness when we took off on this adventure.  Sometimes I feel like a broken record or a parrot mimicking its owner.  We really do say the same thing each and every day.  But…the audience is different and so we keep the same message playing.  The funny thing is that we are still learning life lessons from each patient that we meet.  Just when we think we’ve heard all the stories and learned all there is to know, we run into someone who sheds a little more light and gives us a new perspective and better understanding to this disease and life in general.

On this particular day, we met up with David.  He and his wife came down to the market just to say hello to us and share a bit of their story.  David has been living with ALS for several years now, but is still relatively mobile.  Like others before him, he was forced to quit his job early, which has caused some financial hardships.  His wife has also had to quit her job in order to care for David.  Financial burden is most often absorbed by the families living and dealing with ALS.  There is limited government assistance and no help that is easy to come by.  Patients must apply for assistance through different programs run in each province and often times they are told to wait for up to 6 months for equipment and other aides.  6 months to an ALS patient is like ¼ of their estimated life expectancy given most patients only live for 2-3 years after diagnosis.  David is lucky enough to have a good retirement plan and other support that he does not have to leave his wife in financial ruin at the time of his passing.  (on a side note, David has a team of “foot soldiers”  who work hard each year at fundraising, and given David has a slow progressing form of ALS they are all fighting hard to raise money and find a cure for ALS before it takes his life)  They believe it can happen, and I want to believe it can happen, but we need money and we need money now.  I don’t know how else to say it.  They only way to find a cure is to put money into research, so you can see how important it is that we support our local ALS Societies but also support ALS Canada.  We also need to get the government involved (wow, I never thought I would ever support anything that needed more government!).  What all of this boils down to is one question, “Do we want to live in a society where you are forced into financial ruin simply because you have a disease in which there is no cure?”  It that really the way we want to live and be known for?  I thought one of the greatest things about living in Canada was our health care system, and I can tell you from first hand experience being that I work in one of the busiest hospitals in BC, that we need to take another look at the very thing we are famous for. 

These thoughts and more crossed my mind as we strolled through Parliament Hill after our dinner.  I noticed all the stained glass windows and stone carvings, I noticed the gardens and how the grounds were kept, I noticed that even the feral cats had nice cozy homes with food provided to them and I wondered if any one cared about the ALS patients.  I wondered how much 1 piece of stained glass cost, or how much 1 of those fancy Mercedes Benz cost (do government officials really need cars that expensive to go from point A to point B and do they really need palaces to live in while in office…I mean really, hasn’t any one ever wonder why their own house isn’t good enough?  They were living there before they were in office) and I wondered how and what I might do when I get back to BC to help get more government assistance for this terrible and devastating disease.  I wondered about the politicians’ that live here in Ottawa and how different their lives are compared to those living with ALS and then I wondered how things would change in a hurry if it were them.  As I stood in front of the eternal flame these are thoughts that crossed my mind………….

-jeannie

Last Modified : October 3rd, 2007 Filed under : On Location Navigate : Previous post / Next post