Volunteer work in Italy buoys Calgarians

Calgary general surgeon Dawnelle Topstad landed in Italy on April 9, and began a month of 12-hour shifts volunteering at the Samaritan’s Purse field hospital in Cremona, 75 kilometres from Milan. At that time, Italy, and particularly the northwestern region, was the eye of the coronavirus storm.

“Normally, our medical missions are in developing countries and our accommodations are very challenging, but somebody from Lombardy put all of us up in a hotel and hired a top chef so our food was incredible,” she said.

According to Samaritan’s Purse, Arvedi Steel Group paid for the accommodations and food for the more than 70 staff and volunteers at the Hotel Continental in Cremona’s main square, and would send additional food and treats to the hotel and field hospital.

Along with arranging other gifts-in-kind for items the hospital needed with another supplier, Arvedi’s donation amounted to more than $750,000.

Topstad says the field hospital was inundated with shows of love by the locals.

The mayor of Cremona declared all people involved with the group’s field hospital honorary citizens of the city.

Savannah Koop, a registered nurse at Calgary’s Rockyview Hospital, says she was “blown away by the gratitude we were shown.”

However, she says she’s the one who feels grateful.

“It was such an incredible experience,” says Koop, 26. She fully expected to contract the virus.

“But (Samaritan’s Purse) has so much experience with communicable diseases like ebola, I never did, and because it’s a Christian organization the whole place was infused with prayer and love, so it was a very powerful, positive experience,” she said, even though, sadly, some people did die.

Both Topstad and Koop said they were stirred by how the patients in each tent of 14 formed supportive communities. Topstad said at one time about half of the women in one tent had lost their husbands to COVID-19 as they themselves battled the disease.

“They became lifelong friends, that’s for sure, and it was really lovely to see,” said Topstad.

Koop saw the same thing in the men’s tent. Whenever someone was discharged — to cheering and clapping — he would call the next day to check on their former ward mates.

“People who are sick in hospital with COVID must go through that without their family,” Koop said, “so what I learned in Cremona is it’s more important now than ever to take that extra time at the bedside, to listen for that extra 15 minutes even though sometimes it feels like you don’t have that 15 minutes.”