Elderly Couple Forced to Live Apart After 62 Years Due to Gov’t Health Care Program


Bartyik, the faithful granddaughter of Anita and Wolf Gottschalk has been driving her grandmother the thirty minutes from her Surrey, British Colombia care facility to see Wolf, and the visits always end in tears.

She posted a photo on Tuesday of Anita and Wolf weeping as they said goodbye — and explained that the situation had become even more desperate.

“Today he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Besides that limiting his time and making this more urgent, his dementia is growing ever stronger each day, but his memory of my grandmother has not faded a inch…yet,” she wrote.

The heart-wrenching photo has since been shared more than 5,600 times. Bartyik told NBC News she hopes it will attract the attention of policymakers, who can help not just her grandparents, but other elderly Canadians who are waiting for subsidized beds.

“We’re going through the system blind. It’s not something you’re ever taught to navigate,” she said.

The ordeal began in January, when Wolf was hospitalized for congestive heart failure, and then moved to Yale Road Centre, a transitional facility where the average stay is between 4 and 12 weeks, according to Fraser Health Authority. But after being hospitalized twice more for heart problems, Wolf kept getting bumped to this bottom of the wait list to go to a long-term care facility, Bartyik said. Health workers deemed him too ill to go home to his wife Anita.

Then two months ago, Anita, 81, who has a pacemaker, moved into an assisted living complex at the Residences at Morgan Heights. The complex is set up for residents with varying health needs, and Bartyik has been trying to get her grandfather moved there, even if in a different wing.

Because Wolf needs a nurse with him at all times and Anita doesn’t, they’re classified under two different types of need and therefore are no longer able to be together. So who does nationalized healthcare really serve? The people or the government? What was first advertised as hope for the less fortunate has become a system of misery for those struggle under its grip.

Source: nbcnews.com



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