For blood cancer treatment, ‘I might as well move to Edmonton.’

“Everything was going wonderfully.”

For someone with multiple myeloma, Nancy Bies was feeling pretty good about things.

Just days earlier, she had enjoyed a meeting at Yellowknife’s Chateau Nova Hotel with other people who have the same form of blood cancer, alongside two representatives from a national charity.

The atmosphere had been good and the patients in the room, who didn’t all know each other before the meeting started, ended it talking of forming a support group together.

Then, a phone call.

“I got a call from one of my nurses in Yellowknife and that changed everything. Nothing can be done here in the chemo unit, nothing,” Bies told Cabin Radio in mid-May. “No bloodwork. No referrals.”

The new plan? Fly to Edmonton and back every single week for blood tests and treatment.

“I came home and I told my husband this, and I basically broke down,” said Bies.

“How am I going to do this? I might as well just move to Edmonton. This is no life.”

An Alberta decision

The NWT’s health minister and patients affected by this change paint broadly the same picture of what happened to cause it.

“Edmonton has been trying and trying to work with Yellowknife, and it’s just not working,” said Bies, recounting what she had been told by nurses. “So Alberta said, ‘We have no choice. We have to have all of our patients come to Edmonton to have the care that they need.’ It has completely changed everything.”

Health minister Lesa Semmler, in the legislature on Thursday, said Alberta Health Services had told the territorial government that “under their standard of practice, they felt that their patients weren’t able to be serviced virtually” in Yellowknife.

“So they made the decision to have all of the patients go to Alberta and be serviced through their oncology department,” said Semmler.

Bies is one of about 50 NWT blood cancer patients in that position.

Eventually, Bies was told she could do the trip every two weeks instead of every week. That’s barely any better, she said. “I’ll basically come home, unpack – or not – and then be ready to go two weeks later. I’m very overwhelmed.”

Multiple patients who spoke with Cabin Radio reported being told they’d need to travel either every week or every two weeks. Each patient said that was completely unsustainable, pointing to their inability to hold down a job, manage a family or even live a fulfilling life with 26 to 52 Edmonton flights a year – not forgetting they are already living with cancer.

One patient, who lives in Hay River, described being told the following travel plan: “Fly from Hay River to Yellowknife to Edmonton on Sunday for blood work and an appointment on Monday. Then I’m off Tuesday, Wednesday in Edmonton and then I have treatment on Thursday and then I have to fly back Friday, Edmonton to Yellowknife to Hay River.”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how long I can do this for,” they added.

“Before, I was going to Yellowknife in the morning, getting treatment and I was back by supper time. It’s really changed my life.”

“This is not sustainable for anybody,” Semmler acknowledged in the legislature.

Call for ‘immediate fix’

What happened to lead Alberta to a decision that would upend the lives of dozens of patients?

In an interview at the end of May, Semmler told Cabin Radio oncology staff in Alberta had previously delivered a lot of treatment virtually. “They felt that the virtually way of running it was not up to their standards,” she said.

“They said they would need to stop the program, the way it’s running.”

In the legislature this week, she added that the process of transferring bloodwork and records to Alberta involved systems that “do not speak to our system.”

“The oncologists don’t have the information because when we send it down to them, it’s not being entered into their system in a timely manner,” the minister explained.

Stressing that finding a solution was a priority, she said Alberta had asked for an oncologist and an NWT-based oncology nurse to be put in place before things can go back to the way they were.

“The plan is to work with Alberta Health, because they are the drivers of what needs to be put in place, and that is being done right now with the department and Alberta Health Services,” Semmler said.

“Alberta Health will have to recruit an oncologist, and then we will have to recruit an on-call oncology nurse here in the territory to support that oncologist, to ensure that this program is up and running again.”

Range Lake MLA Kieron Testart, pressing Semmler for a timeline, said: “Situations like these are urgent and require not only an immediate fix, but also a serious review of the circumstances that have brought us to this place.”

Semmler, responding, said: “I have asked to have it done as soon as it can be done, but I cannot push Alberta Health Services on how fast they can go.”

That means Bies must wait – and manage this new reality – indefinitely.

“Why do we have this big, beautiful hospital that they just built and put millions of dollars into, when we have to go to Edmonton?” she asked.

“My anxiety has been through the roof with this, and that is not good. That’s not good for anybody, but it’s not good for someone whose immune system is not the greatest.”

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