While at the theatre to see The War Room with my cousin, my mom called my cell. Since I was in the theatre, I couldn’t answer. When I got in the car, I checked my voicemail. My mom had called to tell me that my stepdad had a heart attack and they had been taken by ambulance to the hospital. They had him stabilized and had scheduled exploratory surgery to see if he was going to have to undergo bypass or if stents were going to be the answer.
My mom and stepdad live in the LadySmith area on Vancouver Island in Canada. They recently moved there from Campbell River. They haven’t lived there long and haven’t made new friends in the area or found a new church to attend. They’re basically on their own, just the two of them. Mom is unable to drive and is relying on an Uber type service for transportation in the 1.5 hour transit that is quite costly.
They moved to Canada after my mother had an accident that shattered her leg. They had been working on a government project and while the initial surgery was covered, when her body began rejecting the cadaver bone they had used, they would not cover additional surgeries that were needed to get her healthy. My stepdad is a dual citizen, they moved to Canada where she was able to get the medical attention she needed.
How sad is that?
Last year, they had looked into moving back to the states to be close to family, but apparently since they moved to Canada, eight years ago, they would be required to pay Medicaid for the the years they did not live in the states. I have a hard time with that. It’s like saying if you don’t have a car for eight years, and no need for car insurance, that when you do get a car, you have to pay insurance for the years you didn’t own one. How crazy is that? Still, I am searching for answers to get them back here. It seems it is far easier to be an illegal, move to the states, get insurance and benefits than it is to be a LEGAL “Returning Citizen.”
I have paced the floors, worried myself to death over the fact that my mom and stepdad are entirely alone, some 3,000 miles away from their family! We are applying for passports so that we can go to Canada to see them. Which I think is NUTS too. I have NO desire to enter that country and stay – I just want to go for a few days. Looking into the whole passport thing is crazy – it’s not clear what I will need exactly to enter Canada and then return to the U.S. Right now it seems like I need nothing to enter Canada, but we have to purchase passports at $150 each to get back into the U.S. Seems to me that it’s just one more way for the United States to gouge people into paying for documents.
After pacing the floors, worrying and praying, I opened my email this morning to a daily prayer. In that prayer was the best SIGN I could have asked for. That prayer read:
The greatest help for our hearts is what you do, and each of us can tell something about it. Each of us has received help beyond anything we had hoped or thought of. How much you have done for us! How much you are doing for the nations! Yes, we thank you for this present time. Although our lives often seem hopeless and full of sorrow, your powers are still living among men, working for their good and awaking them to new life. The time will surely come when our hearts will be released from their hunger and we can be filled with the life from above, which you give us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
What more could I ask for.
At this very moment, my stepdad is preparing to go into surgery where he will undergo a quadruple bypass. I will be hanging on my phone, waiting for word from my mom as to how things went. I have every faith that he will emerge from surgery with a new lease on life. Feeling hundreds of times better and then we can focus on what it will take to get them back to the U.S. where they belong.
