The future is uncertain for residents at LaPointe-Fisher Nursing Home, which is set to close its doors at the end of November.
Mary Dolderman, 73, has lived in Guelph since the 1970s. She moved into LaPointe-Fisher six years ago. Now, she’s not sure where she’s going to go.
The Metcalfe Street nursing home announced its impending closure in April, shocking all 69 residents and over 100 employees.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Dolderman said. “I was shocked when I heard. We’ve been told all along that they were building a new Lapointe Fisher,” she said.
But she thought perhaps she might finally get to move into one of her top three choices: St. Joseph’s Health Centre, The Elliot or Riverside Glen.
When she first moved into LaPointe-Fisher (her fourth choice), she was told her case file would be left open, and while she was bumped to the bottom of the waitlist, she would eventually move into one of her top three choices, likely in a year or so.
That never happened, but since her file remained open and six years later she was near the top of the list, she felt secure knowing that’s where she would be moving to.
A few weeks ago she was even invited for a second walkthrough at St. Joe’s after all these years. Her brother from Thunder Bay, thinking it would be the final step before she moved in.
But she never heard back from them, or any of the other Guelph facilities she’d been waiting for.
“It was such a letdown,” she said. “I felt abused. You get your hopes so high, and then get dashed to the bottom of the barrel.”
A home care coordinator has since been in touch with residents to help them through the process.
“We were told to expand our horizon and look outside of Guelph,” she said.
St. Joe’s has 240 licensed beds and 905 people on the waiting list as of July 31, while The Elliot has 85 beds and 952 on the waitlist, and Riverside Glen has 192 beds and 944 on the waitlist.
Her daughter lives in Rockwood, so she’s considering Wellington Terrace in Fergus, which has 176 beds and 713 people on the waitlist.
She went to see it a few weeks ago, and feels much better having seen it in person.
But still, moving out of Guelph is problematic for her, and her concerns about the process remain.
“We don’t get a firm answer,” she said. “I want to stay in Guelph,” she said.
When asked for comment on how the process of moving residents is being handled, LaPointe-Fisher directed GuelphToday to Ontario Health atHome, which works with residents to transition from a long-term care home scheduled for closure to another long-term care home.
The organization is responsible for ensuring a resident’s assessments are current, completing capacity evaluations, determining eligibility, counselling a resident about their options and assessing for home care if the resident wishes to be discharged into a family or retirement home.
Asked what the likelihood of residents staying in Guelph would be, how far they could end up, and how the whole process works – especially if their case files were still open from before – they responded with the following:
“As with all long-term care applications, patients provide consent and select the long-term care home(s) they wish to apply to. We don’t distinguish between homes that are privately-owned, rather we work with the resident or substitute decision-maker to support the patient’s needs and preferences in choosing homes. We then work with the home to safely transition the resident to their new accommodation,” a representative for the organization said.
Besides being Dolderman’s home of many years, Guelph is also home to her longtime family doctor, who she trusts and wants to remain with.
The home in Fergus told her she would have to leave her family doctor and use a house doctor there.
“It’s important for me to keep (my doctor) because of my history,” she said.
It’s also where her friends are, like Sheila MacInnis, who said she’s worried about the impact the sudden change and uncertainty is having on Dolderman’s mental health.
“She just assumed she was going to St. Joe’s,” MacInnis said. “Then they finally told her she had to keep an open mind and she wasn’t getting in there, that she had to look at places outside of Guelph.”
“(It’s) something you can’t just turn on and off, your body reacting to not knowing where one’s going, knowing that you’re probably not going to get the three other places (you want),” Dolderman said.
“I’ve felt really down in the dumps to be honest,” she said, adding that other residents are feeling the same.
“You try to keep your head on straight and think, well, I don’t know where I’m going to be living, and that’s not a good feeling for anyone. It’s just been a really rough time for all of us.”
