Couple reuniting after months in separate care facilities
An elderly Ottawa couple is to be reunited under one roof next week after seven months apart in different care homes.
Charlie Diffin, 89, and his wife, Joan, 83, were living independently in Stittsville in March until a series of health setbacks sent them first to hospital, then to long-term care facilities 25 kilometres apart.
Married for 62 years, Charlie spent several months at the Queensway-Carleton Hospital before being transferred to Granite Ridge Care Community in early October. A retired mill worker and well-known basketball referee, he is on a locked floor because of advanced dementia.
Joan, meanwhile, went into hospital in April and, due to mobility issues and a severe depression, is being cared for at Saint Vincent Hospital on Cambridge Street in Centretown.
Daughter Donna Bertrand,
58, a Richmond resident, has been trying to reunite them for months.
She said Thursday that her mother is moving to a private room at Granite Ridge on Monday, about 10 days after their plight was profiled in a Postmedia story.
“I’m very pleased,” she said. “This is finally it. She’s been accepted.”
She said her father was thrilled with the news. “He was so happy.” Her mother’s physician, meanwhile, had provided her with a letter that said bringing them together would be a significant boost to her mental health.
Joan, who uses a wheelchair, will have a room on the ground floor — he’s on the third — but it’s expected the couple can spend a good part of the day together and share meals.
Bertrand thought the prolonged separation bordered on the “criminal,” and had expressed frustration in dealing with the Local Health Integration Network, which oversees long-term care placement.
The LHIN said it is committed to reuniting separated couples as soon as is practical and it uses a ranking system to establish a priority list. It reunites about 120 couples annually in its stable of 60 facilities and the average wait time is 40 to 50 days.
Bertrand’s parents’ separation had been so long, and their health prognosis so poor, that she worried one of them might perish before they got back together.
“It’s a good, good thing.” Diffin was a fixture in scholastic basketball circles and his 55 years of service earned him a place in the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame.