Thirty $5 Tim Hortons coffee cards dropped off at the Leduc Emergency Department. I think the word is spreading about this - when I arrived one of the nurses exclaimed, "is this the coffee thing??" to which I replied, "yup!" She clapped in excitement.
I'm not terribly familiar with the Leduc Community Hospital but what I can tell you is that despite being behind a mask and goggles, the five nurses that were behind the desk at Emergency were the friendliest bunch. One nurse wore a black shirt that read "Frontline Strong".
I presented the stack of coffee cards to the charge nurse. She joked with her coworkers "do you think we can use all these tonight?" to which the crew replied a resounding "YES" with laughter. She asked if she should take some of them upstairs because they were short staffed.
By upstairs, she meant the COVID inpatient unit in the hospital. I'm guessing by the grief in her voice about the staffing level that it's not great. I've had a few reports from nurses that the amount of shift call outs lately has been absolutely overwhelming their texts.
That makes 210 total cards delivered for a total of $1050 to 7 hospitals. As of writing, we've amassed a total of $4771.55 in funds with 9 new donors ($283.68) today. I'm humbled that 141 of you have entrusted me - a total stranger on the internet - to do this.
Tomorrow night I'm headed to WestView (Stony Plain) Emergency. I'm collecting all of the heartfelt messages you've been including with your donations and any messages of thanks I get from HCWs here: https://chadohman.ca/coffeeforhcwsab/
The soft-goal is still $5000 but I'll keep this effort up as long as funds allow. As it stands, we've enough to treat ~22 more units which is absolutely amazing. I've had requests for specific units. If you'd like to nominate a unit, please do so here: https://chadohman.ca/nominate-a-unit/
Another story from Calgary today from @JValShuster, owner of @devouryyc: a group of TEN teenagers went door to door last weekend asking for donations for coffee for hospitals there.
The housekeepers at the Wetaskiwin hospital bought a lollipop bouquet for staff with a note "we're all in this together."