Henry Groves is like most other young boys who loves to play.
At only four years old, he’s not able to fully understand the serious medical condition he was born with — kidney disease.
“It quickly progressed into end stage renal failure, so he needed life-sustaining dialysis,” said Lisa Jensen, Henry’s mom.
The family had moved to Victoria just prior to Henry’s birth after living in West Kelowna for nearly a decade.
However, once Henry was born and the family realized the serious medical challenges he has to live with, they wanted to move back to the Central Okanagan where they had family support.
Jensen, however, said that the lack of pediatric services in the Okanagan prevented a return to the Okanagan.
“The type of dialysis that he needed was hemodialysis and it has to be performed at a children’s hospital,” Jensen told Global News. “The only place in B.C. that does that is at the B.C. Children’s Hospital.”
Jensen said the family couldn’t afford to live near the hospital, where Henry had to go four times a week for four-hour dialysis sessions and without that type of pediatric treatment at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH), the family made the decision to leave the province and move to Calgary.
“We will do anything that we need to do to take care of Henry,” Jensen said. “Whether it’s uproot our family from where we want to be and move, we’ll do whatever it takes. Ideally, we wouldn’t have needed to move.”
The family’s decision to leave B.C. was further validated at the end of May, when the family was back in Kelowna visiting relatives.
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Henry fell ill and was taken to emergency at KGH on May 25, the eve of the pediatric ward closure.
According to Jensen, doctors wanted to admit Henry as an inpatient but told Jensen about the looming unit closure.
She said she was shocked.
“I just that couldn’t believe such a catastrophic failure of the system that they can’t take care of children,” Jensen said.
Once Henry was stabilized, the family decided to make the eight-hour car ride home to seek medical care.
The number of pediatric patients, such as Henry, is increasing in the Kelowna area as the population grows. However, local pediatricians say Interior Health (IH) is not keeping up with the demand.
“That includes vision for the future to bolster our neonatal supports, to build a pediatric intensive care unit and all the allied supports and equipment that go with that,” said Kelowna pediatrician Dr. Kate Runkle when speaking to Global News on June 18.
Calls for changes to the service delivery model, including two pediatricians on shift 24/7, have been long called for by pediatricians.
According to the specialists, though, those pleas have been ignored by IH for years.
The doctors add that the current pediatric crisis at the hospital was predicted and preventable.
IH has said the decision to close the pediatric ward for at least six weeks was a difficult but necessary one to ensure there is pediatric coverage for critical services, such as high-risk deliveries.
The ward closure is now in its fifth week.
IH has not said when it will reopen other than it hopes to do so as soon as it safe and feasible.
Jensen said Henry had a kidney transplant last December, having received the organ from his father.
While he no longer requires dialysis, he still needs regular hospital visits for testing and IV fluid treatments.
Jensen said the family wants to one day move back to the Okanagan, but pediatric services, including the ongoing ward closure, makes them nervous.
“I absolutely love B.C. It was, and I feel it still is my home,” she said. “I wish it was a province that we could live in and feel safe and have the care that my son needs.”
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