SUDBURY - Facing a life-threatening infection, one so severe that he required surgery and six weeks of IV antibiotics, Marc Gervais, 59, is sleeping and eating next to a toilet as he recovers at Health Sciences North.
Gervais could be receiving home care — if he had a home. But Gervais and his wife, Mary Ellen, 62, are homeless.
Now, because of hospital over-crowding, Gervais is recovering in a space marked “shower room”, and has been for the last two weeks.
Long and narrow, the room contains a large shower and a bathtub, as well as Gervais’s bed, placed haphazardly in the room, the only way to allow the door to open fully. The toilet is at the end of the bed, just a few feet from the table where he eats all his meals.
The cables and wires for his monitoring equipment are pasted to the walls with what appears to be tape and small squares of gauze plastered like a cast. It’s clearly not meant to be a hospital room.
But that’s where he stays, because there is nowhere else for him to go.
Mama and Papa Bear
Known as Mama Bear and Papa Bear or “Big Guy” around the Samaritan Centre, both Gervais and his wife, Mary Ellen, have been on disability income supplements for a long time. They met at the Elgin Street Mission when Mary Ellen said she saw her future husband with his hands in rubber gloves, washing dishes. “I yelled, ‘Where can I get me one of those’,” she said with a laugh. She was in the market for a man who did dishes.
That was 2003. In 2006, they got married, a second marriage for both. Mary-Ellen said her first marriage was not ideal and she left the marriage when her son demanded she get in the car with him and divorce his father.
Their children are grown and stay in touch with their parents, but are unable to help them financially.
Gervais told Sudbury.com his disability stemmed from a work injury to his knee. It took him from an avid cyclist, “walking everywhere and riding from New Sudbury to Capreol,” said Mary Ellen, to moving a great deal less.
He and Mary Ellen now both use walkers for mobility.
At the hospital, Gervais is confined to a wheelchair that reads “Please return to 4 south gym.” There is one other chair, where Mary Ellen sits. She spends her days with her husband before taking the bus downtown to spend the night at the Samaritan Centre, which is not a shelter but an overnight warming centre.
She told Sudbury.com she tried the shelter, but doesn’t want to go back. “It was so loud,” she said.
The day after Sudbury.com visited with the couple, sitting on the side of a non-working bathtub while we spoke, Mary-Ellen said a “community relations person” from HSN had come to visit. She now has a chair that folds into a bed, making it more comfortable to stay with her husband.
Mary-Ellen said they were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Sudbury until last summer when they were evicted for being unable to pay their rent.
They’ve been fully homeless and staying in a shelter since October. It was the staff that noticed the infection in Gervais’ leg, and Mary-Ellen told Sudbury.com they would “call an ambulance almost everyday” for Gervais to receive treatment. “They gave him antibiotics, but it wasn’t enough.”
Gervais can’t recall the exact date, but knows he arrived at HSN in early January and had surgery almost immediately. He said while draining the infection, a large blood clot also came loose.
He has an IV flow of antibiotics to combat the infection; he needs to be free of illness so he can have surgery on his kidney, which was damaged after a kidney stone in April.
As of Feb.25, he’ll have to stay at the hospital. However, a patient with a place to live, under the same circumstances, could be receiving home care.
Gervais told Sudbury.com the doctor told him they needed him to stay as a nurse is required for a portion of his medical treatment.
But since he’ll be released to a shelter, he is remaining at HSN for his care. While Mary-Ellen said the staff has been very helpful, and are trying their best, “It’s hard for him to eat next to a toilet.”
Hallway medicine and alternate levels of care
Gervais is receiving care, but he’s caught up in what’s known as hallway medicine, when an unconventional space within a health care facility is used for patient care: like a shower room or a hallway, hence the moniker.
Gervais is also considered an alternate level of care (ALC) patient, essentially using a bed that is above his need because he can’t be discharged.
You can’t get home care without a home to go to.
And so, he’s stuck in the shower room of a hospital that is having significant capacity issues.
Though Health Sciences North (HSN) can’t comment on individual cases, Jason Turnbull, HSN spokesperson, told Sudbury.com in a statement that “being over 100-per-cent capacity is our daily reality.”
In January alone, HSN’s daily occupancy ranged from 109 per cent to 122 per cent, while averaging 130 patients in unconventional bed spaces, like shower rooms, every day.
Sudbury.com’s Queens-Park-based sister site, The Trillium, found that in January 2024 nearly 2,000 patients per day on average were kept in “unconventional spaces” in hospitals across the province, according to data obtained through the freedom-of-information system.
That’s the highest number since Ontario Health started tracking it in July 2017, when it was around 1,000 people.
Then, there’s the lack of affordable housing in Sudbury, compared to the number of people who need it, creating a homeless crisis.
The city’s By-Name List, the list of people in Greater Sudbury who are homeless, has reached 299, with 93 staying in encampments, 65 unsheltered, 73 are in shelter, and 68 are provisionally accommodated or “unknown.”
The City of Greater Sudbury has been working for at least two years on a housing supply strategy, and the city’s Roadmap to End Homelessness by 2030 is grounded in the addition of rent-geared-to-income social housing. Both the strategy and the roadmap rely on funding from upper levels of government, with a current projected cost of $350 million.
In his statement to Sudbury.com, Turnbull stated that HSN needs to grow to meet current and future needs.
“The province is aware of these challenges, and we are working closely with our partners to address these issues so patients, families, and healthcare facilities can continue to rely on us as the indispensable hub for addressing the healthcare needs of Northeastern Ontario.”
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com, covering vulnerable and marginalized populations, as well as housing issues and the justice system.