Destination Wellville

By Patty Mintz

How do people cope with chronic sickness and pain? What’s it like to spend a year in intensive care, or to come close to dying? How does a family carry on when a loved one is seriously ill?

Pauline Dakin, CBC Radio's national health reporter and Margot Brunelle, a reporter and editor for CBC Radio’s Information Morning, explore these and many other questions in an upcoming documentary health series, Destination Wellville, to be broadcast across Canada this summer.

The purpose of the series, they say, is to present a personal look at how people deal with illness and how they manage with the health care system at hand.

The two spent eight months following patients in the Kentville area to prepare for the program, which begins 9:30 a.m. this Thursday, June 28. The segments will run each Thursday for 10 weeks and will be repeated each Sunday at 11:30 a.m. on CBC Radio 106.5 for most of the Valley.

The women, both seasoned journalists, have often been asked, ‘why Kentville?’

“The deciding factor was that the health authority was so welcoming. If we had gotten a cold shoulder we would have gone elsewhere,” says Dakin. “When we first contemplated the idea, we e-mailed (Dr. Lynne Harrigan) chief of staff at Valley Regional Hospital and immediately had an e-mail back. We were ‘go’ from there.”

Harrigan, says Brunelle, “understood that it would mean getting access to patients, explaining the concept to patients…she took her own time to go to patients and encourage them to get on board. She also understood we really needed a range of people and illnesses.”

A few of the 12 men and women who are profiled in the series phoned to volunteer after reading about the project in The Advertiser last October; others were encouraged by a specialist or family doctor. And while treatment centered on the Kentville area, participants from as far as Paradise, Annapolis County, took part. Their health conditions run the gamut, from cancer, arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Cystic Fibrosis, schizophrenia and obesity to a woman who planned a home birth.

Brunelle and Dakin gained important insight by talking to surgeons, GPs, cardiologists, internists, palliative care physicians and other health care professionals.

Recently, the journalists returned to the Valley for a final time after months of sporadic visits to interview patients in their homes, in hospital and at workplaces.

“We’ve cried,” says Brunelle, “especially in the last couple of weeks because we really feel we got to know these people and care deeply about what was happening to them,” says Brunelle.

“They let us into the most intimate details and times of their lives, under sickness and stress,” says Dakin.

In the end, Destination Wellville is a mixture of stories, says Dakin.

“We lost some people,” she says, referring to the deaths of two of the participants, but there were a lot of happy endings, a lot of twists and people whose situations had no conclusion. For them it is an on-going battle – wins, losses and draws – just like life.”

In the case of Dale Jollymore of Lawrencetown, life took an unexpected and terrible turn after a routine hospital procedure. The 55-year-old contractor ended up spending over a year in IC units in Halifax and Kentville and couldn’t talk much of the time.

Today, Jollymore describes his illness as “a roller coaster ride,” and the future as “uncharted territory. I don’t know what lays ahead,” he said by phone.

In the series, retired Port Williams Elementary School principal Sandy Carmichael describes her battle with arthritis and osteoporosis. At one point, she undergoes a thumb joint replacement, a surgery witnessed by Brunelle.

The documentary was never intended to scrutinize the health care system, but its ups and downs were revealed nonetheless.

“We found it can be kind of a hit and miss thing,” says Dakin. “Some people get great care and some get lousy care. We walked away with (the realization) you really have to be your own best advocate.”

“And all of the people we followed were able to do that,” adds Brunelle.

Now that the interviews, research and production are completed, Brunelle and Dakin reflect on the experience.

“We were having trouble saying good-bye to people,” says Brunelle. “We’re having withdrawal symptoms,” Dakin says with a chuckle.

The pair say the Kentville area went beyond their expectations in terms of an ideal place to spotlight.

“The number of times we said, ‘aren’t we glad we picked Kentville?” says Dakin. “The people, the stories were incredible; the openness to us.”



Advertiser reporter on Wellville documentary

Advertiser reporter Patty Mintz acknowledges she had a few second thoughts about telling her health story for a nation-wide radio audience.

“It’s one thing to sit in your kitchen sharing a cup of tea and telling your problems to two women, one of whom happens to be holding a microphone. The reality that thousands of people will probably hear it is another,” says Mintz, who suffers from an incurable and painful condition known as Dry Eye Syndrome.

Now, like others who agreed to take part in the series, she is anxiously waiting for the program to air.

“I’m not only curious to see how my own story has been put together, but also about the other people who were interviewed. I feel we’re all in this together, even though we have never actually met.”

Mintz, 56, says she had another reason to volunteer for the series.

“I was curious to see how women in another form of media go about their work. I was intrigued by the idea of the radio process.”

She says it also felt good to vent to such sympathetic ears.

“Pauline and Margot have been so genuinely interested and concerned.”