Carly Carey bought a rental property before she went back into chemo for the third time. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything beyond the obvious, another investment for a couple who already knew real estate inside and out. Then she spent months in the Nanaimo Cancer Clinic listening to her husband Morgan talk to other patients in the waiting room, hearing the same story over and over: people travelling from all over the island, some from as far as Port Hardy, trying to figure out how to afford a place to stay while they got treatment that might only take seconds.
That house they’d just bought wasn’t rented yet. Morgan came home one night and said he had a plan for it.
Carly’s story is powerful. She was eighteen the first time, a Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis that meant six rounds of chemo in Nanaimo followed by daily radiation trips to Victoria, four hours round trip for a treatment that lasted less than fifteen seconds. She told me she still remembers feeling lucky, even then, that her family had a car and the means to make the drive. Not everyone does.
This last year, stage four mantle cell lymphoma and a rare double diagnosis with leukemia sent her back to that same clinic. That’s when the idea for Carly’s House took hold, a free place for cancer patients to stay, run not by Carly and Morgan but by the Nanaimo Hospital Foundation, with a separate bathroom in the primary bedroom and a closed off dining area and kitchen built for cooking real meals with family. Small details, but as Carly says, if you’ve ever spent a week too sick to smell food cooking down the hall, you understand why they matter.
Carly and Morgan want little credit for any of it. She kept turning the conversation back to the Hospital Foundation, to the Insurance Compnay covering the policy, to the community she’s hoping will help cover the rest. When we spoke – the Careys were looking for the donation of an appliance package.
“We have your back, and you are not alone,” she told me, and you could tell she meant it for every person who walks through that door.
If you’d like to support Carly’s House, you can reach out through the Nanaimo Hospital Foundation or find Carly and Morgan Carey on social media.
You can hear our full conversation on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP40PulsePodcast.
The PULSE Community website: ThePulseCommunity.ca.
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/