Genocide in Myanmar. Starvation in the Sudan. Cataclysmic air crashes over the Pacific.
There is no shortage of suffering in the world. Perhaps, as many suggest, it has always been so, and the only thing that has changed is man’s knowledge of it. Certainly, with the flick of a switch or a simple keystroke, people today can gain instant access to the anguish of others.
Yet paradoxically, the same technological advances that have given man greater insight into catastrophe have also hardened him to it. Suffering has become so commonplace that it often warrants reporting only when encountered on a grand scale; individual tales of grief and sorrow frequently get lost in the shuffle.
The misfortunes of Leah Reimer are a case in point. The 47-year-old Palling mother of three is unknown to most people, yet her experiences read like a modern-day story of Job.
Reimer’s life has never been easy. She suffers from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and osteoarthritis, and has in the past battled drug addiction. Yet in December 2013, despite ongoing health issues and a chronic shortage of money, she felt her life was finally on track; she’d worked hard to overcome a number of personal problems, reconnected with her estranged sister Thea, and was getting ready to celebrate Christmas.
The only thing missing was her children. While son Cody was unable to make it home, her daughter Mariah (who lives in Vernon) wanted to spend the holidays with the family. On Dec. 22, eager to reunite the family (one son still lives at home), Reimer borrowed friend’s car, scrounged up some money for gasoline, and headed east along Hwy. 16. Thea came along to keep her company.
Just outside Fraser Lake, the trip went terribly wrong.
“To be honest, I don’t have any actual memory of the incident,” she says. “I only know what the police told me. Apparently, I was driving down the road, and a moose jumped in front of the car. I hit the moose with my friend’s car. I guess the moose took the hood off.
“The police told me later that I handled the car very well. I pulled it off the road, which I have no memory of doing but the police said I did. Whoever stopped and looked after my sister and I shut the car off, I guess.”
Reimer, unconscious from a serious head injury, was transported first to the Lakes District Hospital in Burns Lake, and then to the University Hospital of Northern B.C. in Prince George. After stitching a massive cut on her forehead and doing a quick chest x-ray, doctors then transferred the Burns Lake woman to hospital in Vancouver.
She remained in Vancouver for several weeks, but has no recollection of her time there.
“I’d say probably the first three weeks in the hospital, I have no memory,” she says “I had friends come to visit me, family that came to visit me, and I don’t remember seeing any of them. I saw pictures afterwards, but they told me I was heavily medicated.”
Toward the end of the first week in January, Reimer recovered enough to call home. It was then that she learned her sister Thea had been killed in the accident.
“I phoned home to talk to my husband, and I also wanted to talk to sister,” she recalls. “My husband Carl said I couldn’t. I didn’t get why I couldn’t, so I asked him again, and he just said: ‘You can’t’. And then I got angry, and said: ‘Put my fricking sister on the phone, I want to talk to my sister.’
“He (Carl) was trying hard not to tell me. He was trying to wait until he could be with me to tell me, but sometimes you can’t do things the way you want to, so he ended up telling me (of Thea’s death) when I was in the hospital in Vancouver.”
The news devastated Reimer. “Thea was my sister, but she was also my best friend,” she says. “I feel guilty. If she hadn’t been with me, she’d still be here. I wanted her to come with me. But I’m in a bad situation now. I need her more now than I did then, and I don’t have her.”
Shortly after learning of her sister’s death, Reimer was deemed well enough to return home – but only on the condition that she stop in Prince George for another chest X-ray. The hospital was unable to accommodate her, so she returned to the facility a week later for the requisite scan.
That’s when doctors discovered a suspicious mass in her lung.
“I didn’t know anything about it until about two weeks later in Burns Lake, when my doctor said: ‘They think it’s cancer’,” she recalls. “I started crying.”
Subsequent testing confirmed the initial diagnosis. She returned home to Palling with her husband and youngest son, frightened but determined to fight the disease.
The need to travel to specialist appointments has strained the family’s limited finances, she says. Although BC’s Ministry of Social Development has provided her with some money for medical travel, Reimer has frequently had to borrow from friends. She’s managed to make every one of her scheduled appointments, but was on the verge of cancelling a crucial medical trip to Kelowna last week until someone came through with fuel for the family vehicle.
“I was going to cancel the appointment, but then I phoned somebody, and they got me enough gas to get there and home,” she says. “They couldn’t do anything else. I was supposed to go and spend the night in a motel so that I was rested and not stressed out from the drive before all the testing, but I can’t keep asking these people to lend me money.”
So far, making every appointment hasn’t helped Reimer in her battle against cancer. Three months after being diagnosed, she’s still awaiting treatment.
“All I can think about in my head is that this frigging cancer is eating away at my lung,” she says, “and lung cancer doesn’t have a lot of survivors. It kills more people than survive. So I’m scared – petrified, really.
“Honestly, I just want them to treat me. I want to survive. I want to be with my family as long as I can be. I know I’m disabled, I know I’m overweight. I know I’m poor. But help me survive.”
Despite all she’s been through, Reimer tries to maintain a positive outlook on life. She admits, though, that it’s often difficult. She spends a lot of time alone in the family’s rented home on Hutter Road.
“Some days are better than others,” she says quietly. “Some days I manage. They say to try and have a positive attitude. Some days I’m able to do that; I just don’t think about it (the cancer). But some days it’s hard. It’s on the radio, it’s on TV.
“I was raised a good Catholic girl, but I’ve struggled with that,” she continues. “But I do believe in a higher power, the Creator, and I sometimes wonder what I’ve done wrong, because this feels like punishment.”
Friends recently suggested that Reimer use the internet to publicize her plight. Desperate for help, she agreed. A web page has been established in her name on the YouCaring.com site, but to date it’s proved only moderately successful and generated just $701 in donations. So locally a trust account has been set up at the Bulkley Valley Credit Union in the Lakeview Mall.
It seems that even in today’s technological world, it’s possible to remain anonymous – even when you don’t want to be.
Still, Reimer greatly appreciates the financial and emotional support she’s received so far.
“I’ve had friends post all kinds of stuff trying to get other people to help me,” she says. “Maybe I haven’t had all the help I’d like to have had, but I have had help. So obviously, some people think I’m worth helping.”