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Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine
CJRM Summer 2000 / été 2000

Meningitis in the Chilcotin

Sterling Haynes, MD

CJRM 2000;5(3):156-7.


Dr. Haynes recalls an event that took place in 1962 at the Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake, BC.

The white glare of the policeman's flashlight shone in my eyes as I struggled up from sleep. "What the hell is going on?" I hissed in alarm.

"Sorry, Doc," whispered the giant cop as he dripped melting snow all over the carpet. "You must have knocked your phone off the hook, and the matron at the hospital needs you right away."

"What's the problem?" I asked, as I shielded my eyes from his light. He shifted the light away.

"Sister Robert just arrived from the Alexis Creek reservation with six sick babies. They look pretty bad to me Doc. She drove through some pretty dreadful weather to get here. She said the roads were awful. She slid all the way down Sheep Creek Hill."

I swung my legs off the bed and glanced around for my clothes, amazed that my wife had not awakened. Our new baby must have tired her out more than I realized.

"I'll be right there, Constable, " I said.

As he turned to leave I called softly after him, "Careful not to wake my kids on the way out."

"You be careful too, Doc. It's snowing and slippery as hell out there."

I dressed hurriedly to the thumping sound of my own heart, slung on my Macinaw, buckled my overshoes and tiptoed out of the house so as not to waken my family. The carport was snowed in. My breath frosted the cold dawn and my moustache sprouted icicles as I shovelled my way out. Lots of time to wonder what awaited me.

Snow crunched under the Ford's tires as I gripped the steering wheel and slipped sideways all the way down the hill as the tire chains rattled uselessly against the chassis and fenders. Finally the lights of the War Memorial Hospital glimmered into view. Somebody had shovelled out the front entrance but the heavy snowfall was already filling it in.

My footprints were the first to pass Sister Robert's battered van, which was covered with snow and frozen slush. She must have been desperate to drive those roads and send the constable to root me out.

A warm blast of air fogged my glasses as I opened the hospital door. "He's coming now," I heard Sister Robert tell the matron before she turned to greet me. She looked tired and drawn, her white wimple accentuating her tanned and lined face. Her grey habit seemed to echo the soberness of the situation. Light from the forty-watt bulb of the emergency room glistened off her gold cross.

"How did you ever make it through in this weather?" I asked her.

"It was bad," she said. " We have thirteen sick babies, Doctor. All under a year. I could only bring the six sickest ones. Veasey is somewhere behind me in his truck and camper. The other seven babies are in the camper with his mother."

"Let's take a look at what we've got," I said in mounting alarm. Thirteen babies!

"I thought it was pneumonia when I first saw them Doctor, but they all got sick at once and some had running ears," she said, fingering her rosary.

"Do you think it could be meningitis?"

"We'll have a real emergency on our hands if it's meningitis," I said.

The first baby I saw was a 10-month-old boy named Ray Johnny.

He was quiet, the fontanelle bulging, his neck stiff and his eardrums red.

"You're a good diagnostician, Sister," I said. "It looks like meningitis. We'll need to do lumbar punctures on all of them. I'll call Donald to come and help. He's the only other doctor around. The other two docs are away."

"And not coming back anytime soon," said matron. "The airport is closed. Nothing flying in or out. If it's meningitis, the kids will have to stay here. I'll get all the available nurses and aides in. We can use you for as long as you can stay, Sister."

It was a long, grey dawn. The snow piled up, drifting across the silent town. The tree line and lake were invisible. The hospital door opened and Veasey, the seven babies and Donald all blew in at once.

"My God!" Donald's Scottish brogue echoed down the hospital corridors. "I never saw kids as sick as this in Edinburgh. Never saw snow like this in Edinburgh. Wish to hell I was still in Edinburgh."

"We'll manage, Donald, once we get all the cutdowns running. We may have to stay here alternate nights," I said.

"I'm game," said Donald. "We don't have a choice. The blizzard could last a week."

So began the long vigil, with Sister Robert in charge of the native babies, cutdowns, IVs and multiple antibiotics.

After ten days the babies were much better, the snow cleared from the roads and a January thaw set in. The announcer at the Williams Lake radio station issued twice daily bulletins for the parents to come and get their children.

"Jimmy Johnny in Nemiah Valley, come and pick up your son. Johnny at Tasiniah Lake Lodge, tell Mac Quilt to leave the fencing job and drive in to get Emily." Sometimes even Sister Robert would get on the radio to plead with parents to come and pick up their kids at the hospital. Mostly, she took them home in her battered van.

I ran into Sister in the hospital just before she returned to the reserve. I thanked her for her invaluable help in caring for the thirteen babies. It had been her astuteness in initially assessing the babies that had saved their lives. But I was also interested in knowing why she had joined the Order in the first place.

"I wanted to help spiritually, and practically as a Grey Nun," she told me. "I've done it for 20 years, Doc. I work best in lonesome places like the Chilcotin. Religiously, perhaps I have been neglectful, but people of the Chilcotin trust and depend on me now."

Two months later Sister Robert was recalled to Montreal for a two-year religious retreat. Rumour had it that her superiors felt she'd lost touch with God and the church.

Thirty-seven years later, I went to the new Cariboo Memorial Hospital to look at the records of those thirteen babies. The records had disappeared. And Sister Robert never returned to the Chilcotin.


Correspondence to: Dr. Sterling Haynes, 3135 Shannon Place, Westbank BC V4TlL3

© 2000 Sterling Haynes