Christmas is meant to be spent with family and friends, so imagine having to spend it in a hospital far from home and those you love.
That’s exactly what happened in 2018 to Nick Beamish, a teacher and coach at St. Peter Catholic Secondary School in Peterborough, when he experienced a cardiac crisis. After learning that Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) did not have the facilities to diagnosis and treat his condition, he had to spend Christmas in a hospital in Kingston, hours away from home.
Since then, Beamish has been an advocate for the PRHC Foundation’s $60-million Campaign for PRHC, which is helping to ensure the hospital has the lifesaving technology that he needed to receive care close to home.
“The whole family was uprooted at a time during Christmas when everyone’s supposed to be together because I was stuck in Kingston in the ICU,” Beamish recalls. “For me to be able to get the care that I needed at home would have made all the difference in the world.”
Given that he was in his early 30s and had an active lifestyle, Beamish was not initially concerned when he began experiencing regular chest discomfort and heart palpitations in the weeks leading up to the holidays in 2018, instead attributing it to exhaustion of the end of the school term.
When the symptoms continued to get worse, he went to the emergency room at PRHC, was hooked up to an EKG monitor, and learned there were issues with the electrical signals in his heart.
For PRHC’s healthcare professionals to assess the cause of Beamish’s abnormal heart rhythm and make a diagnosis, they needed to conduct an electrophysiology study. Unfortunately, the hospital did not have the facilities to conduct the procedure, and Beamish was rushed to Kingston General Hospital, where he spent Christmas and part of the new year in the ICU awaiting the procedure.
“My now wife was there with me, but she was staying in a hotel far from home the entire time that I was in the hospital,” he says. “My dad did the same. The amount of stress and loneliness and challenge that it posed for me and for my wife and family was a lot.”
Despite how difficult the experience was, Beamish says he’s grateful the emergency happened before he became a father of two young boys.
“I couldn’t imagine going through all of this with my boys at home, trying to navigate being in the hospital all the way in Kingston, or having to help them understand what’s going on with me while I’m so far away,” he says.
Fortunately for patients like Beamish and their families, with the support of donors, the PRHC Foundation’s largest-ever fundraising campaign is nearing its $60 million goal to reimagine healthcare at the regional hospital that serves a population of up to 600,000 people in Peterborough and surrounding areas.
“When you’re in Toronto, you can get care in 10 minutes because there are so many hospitals, but when you’re in Peterborough, there’s only one place to go,” says PRHC Foundation President and CEO Lesley Heighway.
“If I need emergency cardiac care, it has to be there, and it has to be ready. We have to have world class care available here, because the alternative is there will be times when that trip down the 401 in the back of an ambulance is just too long.”
According to Heighway, $11 million of the funds raised through the Campaign for PRHC will go towards “keeping hearts at home” through cardiac care advancements at the hospital.
Some of the early funds raised have already been invested into the upgrade of PRHC’s two state-of-the-art cardiac catheterization lab suites. The advances in technology have already improved the quality of diagnostic imaging that enables healthcare professionals to perform minimally invasive procedures there.
Now the community is being asked to support the next phase of cardiac advancements: the introduction of a new service to the region with the creation of an electrophysiology lab.
The technology will support patients who have abnormal heart rhythms, arrhythmia, or other problems that occur in the heart’s electrical system. For patients like Beamish, it means they will be able to receive the lifesaving care they need close to home.
“By bringing a third cardiac lab, we’ll be able to treat people that right now have to drive to Toronto or Kingston for electrical conditions of the heart,” says Heighway. “We’re really excited about the level of innovation and the lifesaving services that are coming from this campaign. We should not underestimate the impact of having care close to home.”
Having a cardiac electrophysiology lab at PRHC will improve care and reduce travel and costs for patients, but it will also attract top healthcare professionals to work at the hospital.
“Young doctors, nurses and staff want to be surrounded by state-of-the art technology and they want to be surrounded by innovation,” Heighway points out. “Having that technology will help the hospital to recruit the physicians we want to be working in our community.”
As for Beamish, he continues to be regularly monitored by PRHC’s cardiology department, since heart rhythm issues rarely happen in isolation.
“I was worried that it would come back and that I’d end up back in the hospital in Kingston or in Toronto because the services weren’t available at home,” he says. “If I ever experience those symptoms again, I’ll have to go right to the hospital and treat it with the severity that it needs to be treated with.”
As he approaches the six-year anniversary of his stressful health emergency, Beamish has a simple message for existing and new donors to the Campaign for PRHC.
“Our hospital is an invaluable part of our community, and we don’t realize how much we need the hospital and how important it is until we have to rely on it,” he says. “If we can raise the money to help bring that service closer to home, it’s going to help people and families stay together during such a challenging time in their lives.”
For more information on the Campaign for PRHC or to make a donation, visit prhcfoundation.ca. To volunteer as a campaign ambassador, email foundationeventsonline@prhc.on.ca or call 705-876-5000.
This branded editorial was created in partnership with the Peterborough Regional Health Centre Foundation. If your organization or business is interested in a branded editorial, contact us.
