Thirty $5 Tim Hortons coffee cards dropped off at the Fort Saskatchewan Emergency Department. I love the drive out to Fort Saskatchewan, especially at this hour. Spotted a coyote trotting along Hwy 21 on the way. Another perk? The hospital has free parking!
The facility is relatively new, opened in 2012. The layout makes sense and architecturally fits into the city. I buzzed the intercom and the triage nurse came and let me in. I let her know what I was there for and with a quick squirt of sanitizer she lead me to the charge nurse.
I presented the stack of thirty pages and one of the other four or five nurses at the nursing desk exclaimed "OH MY GOODNESS" to which she retracted and said "oops, sorry!" I had to laugh. As I spoke there were inquisitive faces all around.
Explaining my initial goal was $600 to just cover the ICUs and how that's been blown out of the water, the charge nurse said "oh we're just the leftovers?" I think they might get a little forgotten out there. I reassured him the fund was always for all critical care teams.
Another nurse peeked over the counter at the stack and said "oh sweet!" I think she might like Tim Hortons. I wrapped up and they all said thank you to which I replied with a thank you.
That makes a total of $900 distributed to ICUs and now EDs. Overall, we've raised $4487.87 together. 11 more donated today a total of $227.79. Thank you. We have enough to cover all of the EDs and a few converted COVID units. Click here to nominate a unit: https://chadohman.ca/nominate-a-unit/
The Twitter poll spoke! Tomorrow is the Leduc ED, Thursday is the WestView (Stony Plain) ED, and Friday is the Strathcona ED. I'm playing with the idea of reaching into Central Zone slightly to Wetaskiwin and Camrose on Saturday. I've had MANY requests from folks down there.
If that's the case, Sunday will be the Devon ED. Next week I'll start on the urban EDs. Watch for a poll on that this weekend. I'm collating all of the wonderful messages you've been sharing with your donation with messages of thanks from health care workers here: https://chadohman.ca/coffeeforhcwsab/
My soft-goal is $5000. I'll keep this up as long as the funds allow. We're bringing some real joy into these health care professionals shifts and right now there's nothing more important.
I was told a story today out of Calgary. Two kids went around their neighbourhood fundraising and came up with $300 for coffee cards for the Peter Lougheed and the Foothills. This filled my boots. I'm thrilled to have inspired these two young leaders in their community!
If you've heard about anyone else doing this in other communities, I've learned that you can reply to this email and it goes directly to my inbox! You can also DM me on Twitter. I'd love nothing more but to amplify! Thank you for helping make this possible.