Nunavut cancer patient in Toronto: “it’s too overwhelming”

Happy times: Janice Simailak’s profile photo on Facebook.

Janice Simailak has launched a crowdfunding campaign on the site GoFundMe to help cover expenses she is incurring while receiving cancer treatment in Toronto. (PHOTO COURTESY OF JANICE SIMAILAK)

It’s hard to suffer from cancer, far away from family and friends in Toronto.

It’s even harder for Janice Simailak of Baker Lake when she thinks she could have been diagnosed much sooner and received earlier treatment that could have eliminated her cancer more easily.

She and her husband Darryl are going into debt so she can get medical treatment she needs and which she sought — but didn’t receive — through the Government of Nunavut health care system.

After months of discomfort and repeated visits to the health clinic in Baker Lake, Janice discovered only last October from doctors in Toronto that she suffers from intestinal cancer.

Since then she’s undergone surgery and now faces a six-month round of chemotherapy, which starts this week.

“If they were able to send me right away to Winnipeg when I asked them to, I would be done by now [with my treatment],” Janice Simailak said from Toronto, where Nunatsiaq News reached her by telephone.

“It’s too overwhelming. I can’t explain. I don’t have any perfect words,” she said, her voice breaking.

But Janice, 32, said she felt “shocked” when she and her husband Darryl Simailak found out she had been diagnosed with cancer.

Janice travelled to Toronto on the urging of her father-in-law, the former Nunavut MLA and cabinet minister David Simailak, who is the friend of a physician there.

Doctors there found Janice had intestinal cancer, which had been displaying symptoms for many months, she said.

Sometimes Janice felt an intense discomfort when she moved quickly, a pain so sharp that she had to sit down. She recalled how she had felt tired and had no appetite.

Despite repeated visits to the local health centre, Janice could never get an idea what was wrong: the nurses she saw suggested she take over-the-counter painkillers or to Google her symptoms online.

“I would just go back home with Tylenol or even steroids. They also gave me a book to read and told me to go online to diagnose myself,” she said.

Janice’s husband and son, 12, are with her in Toronto and they’ve spent $30,000 so far in travel and other expenses. A single round-trip ticket from Baker Lake to Toronto runs about $4,000.

Soon her husband will return to Baker Lake to work because he’s used up all his sick leave. The couple has a mortgage to pay on their home in Baker Lake on top of rent for their apartment. There’s no money coming into her bank account at all, Janice said.

Janice had heard about online fundraising campaigns which is why she said she decided to go on GoFundMe, with the goal of raising $12,000 to help with their mounting bills.

You can see her GoFundMe page here.

Other Nunavut patients stranded in the South are also appealing for help through GoFundMe.

A Nunavut woman, Uviluq Naukatsik of Rankin Inlet, who recently received a heart transplant, also reached out this week for help through an online crowdfunding campaign.

And a Gjoa Haven man undergoing treatment for cancer at an Edmonton hospital has also turned to online crowdfunding for money to help reunite his family.

Nunatsiaq News has contacted the GN’s health department for comment about its policies on medical treatment for Nunavut residents in the South, but has not yet received a reply.

“Any and all of the costs for travel, medical, meals, ground transportation, housing, etc would have all been covered by the Government of Nunavut if our daughter-in-law had been referred by a doctor specifically to Winnipeg,” David Simailak said on her GoFundMe page.

“But, because I was getting scared for her life after watching her waste away to skin and bones after 7 months, I got scared and sent her to [see] a doctor friend in Toronto at our own cost. It was then we found out she had cancer. It’s been basically 7 months of travelling and living on their own in Toronto, and still 6 months to go.”

Simailak said in a comment to Nunatsiaq News “all that matters now is we saved her life.”

A report released last year noted relatively poor access among Inuit to health care related to cancer prevention, screening and care.

“The necessity of medical travel, health human resources shortages and lack of culturally relevant resources and services present significant barriers to effective cancer control,” the report from the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer’s Inuit Cancer Control in Canada Baseline Report.