‘I’m so sick’: Regina woman asks for help after running into health-care blocks

Jolene Van Alstine has been so sick, for so long, she’s been approved for Medical Assistance in Dying.

The Regina woman has a rare parathyroid disease, normocalcemic primary hyperparathryroidism, which can cause extreme pain, nausea and vomiting, overheating, and anxiety and depression.

“Every day I get up, and I’m sick to my stomach and I throw up, and I throw up. It takes me hours to cool off, I overheat, we have to turn the temperature down to 14 degrees when I get up in the morning in the house,” said Van Alstine.

“I’m so sick, I don’t leave the house except to go to medical appointments, blood work or go to the hospital.”

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She said she spends her days sick and curled up in a ball, wishing for the day to end.

“I go to bed at six o’clock at night because I can’t stand to be awake anymore,” she said.

Van Alstine’s husband, Miles Sundeen, said she needs to be in the care of an endocrinologist and get a surgeon to take her glands out. But the endocrinologists in Saskatchewan are so busy, Sundeen said they’re not taking on any new patients.

He said she first started getting sick in 2015 and was bounced around from doctor to doctor for four years until she got a diagnosis. Then it took years to get someone to recommend the proper course of treatment – Sundeen said she’d had other surgeries, but they didn’t do enough.

At this point, her situation is so bad, she’s applied to and been approved for the Medical Assistance in Dying program.

In what appeared to be a last-ditch effort, the couple attended Question Period at the legislative building on Tuesday as guests of the NDP, looking for a meeting with the health minister.

“It’s been very difficult, very difficult. It makes me feel very sad that we have to go to the media, get the support from the NDP, to have people in this province supported through the health system – definitely needs to be improvements so there’s more help for people that have really dire needs,” said Sundeen.

Jared Clarke, the NDP’s rural and remote health critic, said the party hears stories like this all the time.

“Our health-care system is worse now than it’s ever been, and we really need solutions here for folks like Jolene and Miles,” he explained.

When asked about her case during Question Period, Minister Jeremy Cockrill responded that he knew the ministry had been in contact with the couple over the last months, and that he would be willing to meet with them to understand if anything more could be done.

Ahead of the meeting, Van Alstine said she hoped the minister would agree to help them find a specialist out of province to treat her.

980 CJME reached out to the Ministry of Health, but it did not respond in time for the publication deadline.