Gloria Chapman

Daily visits kept her spirits up

Looking at Gloria today, you would never know that less than one year ago she had broken her neck and back in an accident. In June of 2014 the mother of four and grandmother of thirteen was cleaning a dry-docked boat. She took one wrong step, slipped and fell from the boat to the ground. Her fall left her with serious injuries. Her neck was broken in three places and her back in two places. Gloria says, “They didn’t know which way I was going to go. But my husband knew I was too stubborn not to recover.”

Her husband was right. But it wasn’t an easy road. She was taken immediately to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown and spent 10 days there before being brought back home to Souris Hospital for her recovery. Gloria has no recollections from the time she fell until she arrived at Souris Hospital, where she spent three month recovering from the accident. At first she couldn’t move her arms or her feet and couldn’t turn her head or her body.

The most important part of the healing process for Gloria was having her family nearby. Her husband was able to visit her in the morning before work, and in the evening after work. Even if it was just a quick visit, it helped keep her spirits up during a very difficult time. If she had been in another community, the visits would have been much more infrequent. She believes having her husband and other family members able to visit so often helped her recover quicker than if she had been further away. As Gloria herself noted, “it was half of getting better.”

Looking at Gloria today you would never know what had happened to her less than one year ago. She has some lingering pain and some of her range of motion is limited but otherwise she has made a full recovery. She thanks the staff for taking good care of her, “I truly appreciated everyone: nurses, doctors and kitchen ladies.

“There are special people here,” she says of the staff at Souris Hospital. Gloria feels that when you know each other it makes the time in the hospital easier. She is a proud supporter of healthcare in her community, “Souris is our hospital and no other hospital can take its place … There is a community spirit here and that is a big help in your healing.”

Having the services we do at Souris Hospital makes recovery easier both on the patient and patient’s family. There is no better comfort than having family close by. The Eastern Kings Health Foundation supports the hospital by helping purchase medical equipment to aid in the recovery and care of patients like Gloria.