A Christmas lights bus tour planned for Friday through the streets of the city has already lit up the lives of a group of seniors awaiting placement in long-term care homes.
They've got Candy Cane Lane, Connaught Hill Park and an Edmonton Street extravaganza to look forward to as part of their one-hour tour, which will take them away from the everyday routine of their second-floor hospital surroundings at UHNBC.
Many of the patients have Alzheimer's disease or some other form of dementia but their Christmas memories remain fresh.
"Around Christmas time we have a lot of elderly patients who are unable to leave the hospital because they are waiting for a complex-care bed at the Jubilee or Gateway lodges, so they stay in the hospital," said Judy Bala, UHNBC's manager of medical services.
"They are so excited about this. They might not remember tomorrow that they went and saw the lights, but they will remember, in that moment, that they are enjoying it."
Tony Romeyn, a now-retired city business owner known for his charitable efforts to help the hospital's pediatric patients and the RCMP's victim services program, will cover the cost of hiring two minibuses to transport as many as 10 of the seniors, many of whom are confined to wheelchairs.
"For them, it was such a highlight to hear about this," said Romeyn, who founded IRL Supplies industrial equipment store in Prince George 40 years ago. "When I was told what happens in their world it felt really gloomy for a while. The need in the community is so high and there are a lot of good people reaching out."
Seniors lodges have recreation aides but hospitals typically do not. To address that shortcoming, Bala has taken it upon herself to organize activities. In August, she took a seniors group from the hospital to spend a day at West Lake provincial park. On Tuesday, the seniors made gingerbread cookies.
"It's something new we're trying at UHNBC is to get them out and make life feel a bit more normal for them," said Bala. "They're not sick, they just can't live at home by themselves. They range in age from 75 to 95 and right now there are 24 of them in the hospital. We're taking the ones who are able to enjoy this part. Some are not able to enjoy it for various reasons."
Until this year, Bala said opportunities for hospitalized seniors to participate in off-site group activities did not exist.
"We have to get these people out to feel fresh air, this is the last part of their lives, why can't we celebrate it?" said Bala. "The possibilities are endless in what kind of activities we can do with them. They don't need all the acute-care things we do, but they still need care. They still need people to know that they are of value and worth. We celebrate when children are born and we make sure there are programs for kids and that they have a good start, but we neglect the other end of that spectrum. How can we celebrate them as they leave this earthly life and have programs that support them where they enjoy being where they are at that moment?"
A shortage of long-term care beds in subsidized facilities means some of the elderly patients have been living at UHNBC for months, and Bala predicts the situation will only worsen as our baby-boomer society ages.
"They say we have this tsunami of gray coming, but it's not a tsunami, it's more like a glacier melting slowly," she said. "It's not like we're going to get this big influx of people who are old, it's going to be here for many years, and we need to have a structure in place to support them in their golden years."
The tour leaves at 4:15 p.m. from the east entrance of the hospital.
