This year, 2026, has proved to be more challenging than I had anticipated. It seemed that each week provided me with a new drama, never easy to fix.  Being a widow and trying to adjust to life without your partner is hard enough. Instead of compassion and understanding, the endless amount of paperwork was overwhelming.

My son and daughter-in-law moved back to Canada in April 2025.  Their help saved me from becoming a complete basket case.   My daughter and son-in-law live an hour away, but they were always there when I needed them.  I have often read that a widow should not make quick decisions for a year after a partner’s death.  I finally decided to sell the house in May of 2026.

Because of problems with the city planning department, the sewers, etc.were not adequate to take care of heavy rain.  In September 2025, the amount of rain we received was the cause of extensive flooding in every house on our street.  In our case, we did not have sewer backup but had what is called overland flooding.  It did not take long before I had two feet of water in my basement.  It was a finished basement, so we lost all the furniture downstairs and everything in the storage area. The city has done nothing to help the families with flood damage.  The city fathers take no responsibility for the mess they created.

In the end, I decided to sell the house “as is”.  My son took down all the damaged drywall and insulation.  He then washed all the walls, etc. with mould remover. I had no idea how quickly mould can appear after water damage. Thankfully, someone wanted the house enough to offer more than my asking price.  After all my son’s hard work cleaning up the horrendous mess in the basement, I could put the house on the market.

After the house sold, I used up what little energy I had left and began to look for an apartment. I found a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with an elevator, less than a year old.   It is slowly beginning to feel like home.  I had to downsize, which was difficult.  I have scaled down my art collection.  When I move out of this apartment, I will be charged for the repair of picture-hanging nails and hooks. After some trial and error, I figured out how to use the 3M strips.  The strips work great with smaller pictures.

As I mentioned earlier, my life seems to move from drama to the next.  I have forgotten what a drama-free day feels like. The weekend of June 19 to June 21 was one that I hope never to repeat.  I received a phone call from my family doctor on Friday afternoon. He informed me that my kidney function was down to 11%.  He wanted me to go to Grace Hospital, where the wait in emergency was 5 hours instead of the 15 hours at St. Boniface. My son, his wife, and I departed for Grace Hospital ER around 3:00 pm. When we arrived, the wait time to see a doctor had grown to 8 hours. They quickly triaged me and drew blood to confirm the high creatinine numbers that were observed in my blood test from earlier in the week.

The ER at Grace was at the beginning of a busy Friday night, and because I was not presenting acute symptoms, they could not provide any information about when I would be seen. After a few hours waiting and the wait time increasing to over 11 hours, we inquired about what they would most likely be able to accomplish diagnostically that evening. They informed us that they did not have a nephrology department or any dialysis units at Grace, and their hospital’s focus was on GI. If my condition degraded, they would most likely seek to transfer me to St Boniface Hospital.

The triage nurse at Grace Hospital noted the following:  low blood pressure and high creatinine levels.  The nurse noted that symptoms were not acute and therefore de-prioritized in ER.  ER physicians were unable to determine if the high creatinine levels were due to an episodic kidney injury due to stress and dehydration or symptomatic of an undiagnosed chronic condition.

Given the de-prioritization at Grace and the environment in the waiting room on a Friday night, I felt it would be better for me to be closer to home. The nurse at Grace recommended that I not return home, but seek a physician’s advice in ER that evening. We then drove to Bethesda Hospital and entered the ER around 9:30 pm.

After triage at Bethesda, and after an hour wait, I was put into a room to wait to see a physician. The ER at Bethesda was also very busy on a Friday night, and I had to wait for a physician to see me before the nurses could provide any food or water or administer any therapy. I waited until 7:30 AM the next morning before I could see a physician.

The physician provided a basic plan of action, but then after shift change (8:00 am) I had to go through another waiting process with the new physician on shift. The information exchange between shifts did not go as smoothly as I hoped, and I ended up waiting another few hours before we saw a new physician who could make the decision to administer fluids and provide food.

Because I had no acute symptoms, I believe the physician de-prioritized me in the queue, which is completely understandable given the priority of trauma cases in the ER. However, without a diagnosis, we remained trapped in a perpetual waiting state. They refused to admit me (my son requested several times) or release me (they were worried about the condition degrading), so we were in a Catch-22 situation and because the physician could come at anytime, my son could not take a break or disengage with the situation during my entire visit.

The new physician finally met with us and wanted to start IV fluids, and then proceed with at least one and most likely more rounds of blood tests to determine if it had an impact on the creatinine levels. We agreed, and the IV fluids made a dramatic positive impact on both my blood pressure and my general feeling. My blood pressure stayed very low all evening and morning. It began to improve after the doctor administered the fluids.

After two rounds of additional blood tests and a CT scan, the shift changed again and we had no further contact with the physician who had requested the tests and the CT. After 19 hours in the ER, my son had reached a breaking point and left for home. My daughter-in-law came back and requested my release. It seemed that they would restart the blood tests again, and we were no longer confident it would result in a diagnosis, so we requested that we could leave.  and I returned home around 8 PM. My son made sure I had lots of water on hand and provided a new blood pressure machine to monitor my blood pressure through the evening and the next day.

In the week that followed my ER experience, my respirologist ordered another round of pulmonary function tests.  He ordered a prescription of Prednisone, which has helped.  However, one does not want to be on Prednisone for any length of time.

It is time to say goodnight. Hope you all have a relaxed and stress-free weekend.  Please keep my sister Linda and her family in your thoughts and prayers.  They are trying to keep a huge fire from destroying their ranch buildings and livestock.