We often hear about load shedding since the beginning of the pandemic, but its effects remain abstract. As hospitals face a critical lack of resources, The duty decided to put words and faces to statistics. Today, the stories of Daniel and Michèle.
Two years ago, Daniel Harpin moved his mother into his apartment building to take care of her. Except that today, it is Mrs. Harpin, at the height of her 86 years, who does the grocery shopping for her son. “It’s the world upside down,” he laughs.
A retired letter carrier, the 63-year-old resident of Rosemère has to deal with the wear and tear on his hip, eaten away by osteoarthritis.
In November, an orthopedic surgeon told her it was easily operable. Probably within a month or two. And nothing since. “But there with the COVID, it doesn’t look good. I didn’t even have my first date. »
In the meantime, his quality of life is reduced to a minimum. “It takes me 15 minutes to get dressed. I have trouble lifting my leg. At night, I wake up every two hours when I move. During the day, he says he “does the living room”. “I hardly move and then I wait. »
Before that, Daniel considered himself a fit man. He gave tennis lessons for a long time, in addition to the long walks required by his job. “I was in good shape. I’ve been a mail carrier all my life and I was working overtime because I raised two kids on my own. I walked a “shot”! “.
When he retired, he did not plan to spend his days in front of the television. On the contrary: “I subscribed to golf. It was my social. I played every day. And there I spent my summer sitting on my balcony. It was really tough. […] I am ten minutes from the golf club and all summer it was sunny…”
To (re)read: our series The faces of load shedding
Waiting for the call from the hospital, he remains glued to his phone at all times. Besides, when The duty called him, not recognizing the number on his display, he hoped for a moment that it was his call.
“The frustration is that it’s not a complicated thing to fix,” he says. “What’s boring is that they know what it is, they know what to do. It seems that it is minor, that I go out the same day. »
If at least he knew when the operation could be done… “Just [pour] have an approximation. Because I think I would take out a loan and then go private. »
A record 18 steps
Michèle Hotte, from Ripon in the Outaouais, is also condemned to remain seated all day long. His knees haven’t worked together for a good three years.
“The only shopping I can tolerate is groceries because there’s a basket I can lean on,” explains the 63-year-old woman who worked as a sanitation team leader at the CLSC and in a CHSLD before leaving for health reasons in 2013.
She was then diagnosed with multiple myeloma (a type of blood cancer) for which she was well treated and is now in remission. But she was not at the end of her troubles.
“At that time, I took advantage of the facilities at Château Montebello to go to the pool to do aqua fitness exercises. But the longer it went, the worse the pain in the knees became. […] I had difficulty climbing the stairs to get to the showers. »
In 2020, her family doctor referred her to an orthopedist. “Both my knees were worn out.” Ms. Hotte waited a year before seeing him last summer and being told that they had to be replaced. “He told me it would take two years.”
Admittedly, load shedding alone does not explain the waiting times which were already very long for this type of intervention before the pandemic. “At that time, it was said that there were at least 4,000 people waiting for surgery. » [Selon le quotidien Le Droit, la région de l’Outaouais en comptait plus de 9000 en octobre dernier].
“It’s not new that we lack resources,” says this former union activist who was vice-president of the CSN’s regional section for the Outaouais. “It’s been a long time since the unions have been shouting it loud and clear”.
Her last snowshoe outing in the field behind her house dates back to 2018. Today, she counts her steps. “Sometimes I have fun seeing how many steps I can take before I stop. It goes from 15 to 18.”
If you would like to share a story on the consequences of load shedding, write to our journalists Isabelle Porter and Jessica Nadeau: [email protected] and [email protected]