N.S. family struggling without home care

A Lower Sackville, N.S. woman, who can no longer care for her elderly mother, says she is hitting a wall when it comes to finding a solution.

Faye Hankey told CBC, so far she's had no luck with hospitals or home care, and has been told the wait to get her mother into a long-term care facility would be at least a year.

"It's a lot of stress. I'm worried about her because I know that medically I can't do the things that I feel she should have. And I'm no spring chicken, I'm 72, and I find it's pretty hard to be lifting ... I just feel pretty badly for her because I can't do anything more than I'm doing," said Hankey.

Hankey's 93-year-old mother Viola Hamilton has been living with her in her mobile home in Sackville Heights for the past three years.

It was going well until October, when her mother's arthritis took a turn for the worse. She's now bed-ridden and in severe pain.

During her most recent visit this week to the nearby Cobequid Health Centre, Hankey told her doctor she could no longer care for her mother and wanted her admitted.

"And he said the only way you can do that is if you take her into the hospital and say 'I can't look after her anymore. You have to take her.' That was it," said Hankey. "I tried that at Cobequid yesterday and I didn't get anywhere with it. I ended up bringing her back home again."

Hankey said protocol dictates that paramedics can't take her mother to the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax when she calls an ambulance. They will only take her to the Cobequid Health Centre where she's checked and sent back home.

She said her mother isn't well enough to travel by car. Hankey has racked up more than $600 in ambulance bills over the last month.

"I mean, I just don't know whether they don't want to deal with it because my mom's an elderly lady, or ... I just don't know, I don't understand why, and each time I've asked 'please take her into Halifax.'"

Hankey applied to the Capital District Health Authority for daily home care in mid-December.

"I didn't want help otherwise, just with my mother. Her personal care, lifting and that. And I have not heard a word, a phone call or anything. That was on December the 16th."

A spokesperson for Capital Health said part of the problem is the chronic shortage of beds for elderly patients.

Hankey planned to follow up on her home care request Tuesday.