CamBay man fights to bring family to gravely ill brother

Harry Maksagak of Cambridge Bay, who fought for his brother to receive family visits in the Edmonton hospital, says video-conferencing can’t replace the healing human contact of personal visits to the sick. (PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — John Komak of Cambridge, a skilled Inuinnaqtun translator and interpreter, now lies in an Edmonton hospital bed, gravely ill.

Depressed, and suffering from poor eyesight and other complications from advanced diabetes, he’s also alone, far from home, with no telephone or computer that he can use to communicate with his family.

After he was medevaced south last August, Komak, 60, who built a career around communication, has been in near total isolation from his family.

If it hadn’t been for the dogged persistence of his brother Harry Maksagak, he wouldn’t have seen any of them.

What the Government of Nunavut offered Komak and his family in lieu of personal visits were long-distance video-conferences between the University of Alberta General Hospital in Edmonton and the Kitikmeot health centre in Cambridge Bay, but Maksagak fought to make sure Komak’s common-law wife, Bonnie, and his two sons, aged 14 and five, were able to visit his brother in person.

Video-conference visits “are not the same,” Maksagak said. The sight of Komak shown on a screen in a hospital bed frightened his brother’s younger son.

“You hear the voice, but the image is quite distorted,” Maksagak said.

After first being told that Komak’s common-law wife and sons were not eligible for any family visits to Edmonton, they have since been able to travel there to see him.

Komak’s common-law wife, who is dealing with her own disabilities, travelled to Edmonton recently with a patient escort, as did his sons, along with Maksagak, when they helped Komak celebrate his 60th birthday.

Maksagak and the two boys saw Komak for three days. At first, the youngest boy was scared, but by the end of the visit, he warmed up to the sight of his father in bed.

The visit offered hope to Komak that he can continue to improve and perhaps be moved closer to home in Yellowknife, Maksagak said.

Komak apparently did not merit a family visit, according to GN travel guidelines.

That’s because he’s deemed to be receiving chronic care, which only allows him to receive one family visit a year. And because Komak is still alive, no Inuit birthright money for compassionate travel was immediately available.

However, after much lobbying, the GN decided Komak could see his family, and NTI also agreed to provide some assistance for yearly visits.

Policies regarding travel to support patients in the South should be more flexible, Maksagak said.

And people should be more vocal about making sure they can visit, he said. Or else, their family members receiving treatment far from home will suffer even more, he said.