Please Make Rapid COVID-19 Testing Available Immediately
Dear Minister Hajdu:
I want to start this letter by acknowledging how good you and your office have been to me over the years. I am a disabled military veteran that is dealing with all of the typical things one would expect with claims in front of Veterans Affairs Canada.
I’m also dealing with additional government agencies because of the advice from VAC, and had it not been for the guidance of your office dealing with the disputes system I’m certain I would be up a really bad creek with no paddle.
I need your help again, and I don’t have time to send this letter to your office – to go through your staff and likely never see your eyes: Minister Hajdu, we desperately need rapid testing available immediately to all Canadians.
Last night my 92-year-old grandmother went into the hospital. She was put on life support. Often times at 92 going into the hospital is an incredibly important affair. This is absolutely no different. My grandmother, like most 92-year-old farmers from the Dawn-Euphemia area, did not ever go to the hospital at any point in her life unless it was critical. As she was put on life support, the hospital clearly felt that it was as well.
The really unfortunate part is that she was taken off life support this morning.
I don’t particularly want to share the pain that I and my family are going through right now. What I want even less is for my grandmother to be sitting alone in a hospital right now, after going through what I can only imagine was a terrifying affair, with no family with her. She never once let me go through anything alone, and there is nothing I can do to bring her comfort right now.
I also will likely never know what she went through. She has nobody to tell because she went through it alone.
I also can’t comfort my mother right now either. She is on the other side of an imaginary line that creates the travel restriction that I face in order to see her. I can sort of imagine what my mom is going through in not being able to be with hers right now; my chest hurts so bad I can’t breathe, and I’m writing this through a stream of tears that just won’t stop.
Patty, if rapid tests were available I could go to my family and we could be together through the next steps of whatever is going to happen. I’m not going to speculate on what that is going to be, but I am going to pray that it goes very well for all of us.
I understand that COVID-19 is unprecedented, and I get that we all need to do our part. My grandmother has not left her house, except for medical testing as a 92-year-old diabetic living on her own in her own house, since February of this year. If anyone followed the rules it is her. She has no chance of COVID-19 exposure, and as her primary caretaker, my mother was at no greater risk. I also know that those two did absolutely everything you asked of them, at every step of this pandemic, and right now they deserve to be together.
I feel confident you have worked harder through this pandemic than you have at any other point in your life and I know what I am asking you is no small feat. But I am asking you this out of sheer desperation so that nobody else needlessly suffers like this. Please Minister Hajdu, please make rapid testing available immediately to all Canadians.
Yours very truly,
Amanda Moddejonge
