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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Alberta doctors are telling a Yellowknife resident to stay in the province long enough to become eligible for Alberta health care after the territorial government refused to pay for his prosthetic leg.

Jeff Merrill lost his right leg from the knee down in a motorcycle accident in early September. Territorial health care policy will not cover his prosthetic leg. - photo courtesy of Yvonne Haward

Jeff Merrill was airlifted to Edmonton with a severe leg injury on Sept. 6 when he lost control of his motorcycle on Franklin Avenue. His right leg sustained severe damage to bones and nerves and irreparable damage to two arteries.

"They gave me the option to remove the leg or keep it," Merrill said in an interview from Edmonton, where he has been recovering since the accident. "The doctor told me it would be better to remove it."

Merrill's wife Yvonne Haward said damage to Merrill's leg would have left him without feeling in his right foot, and that he would never be able to walk normally again.

"The doctor told him it could be a year from now after about 20 or 30 surgeries they might still have to amputate," she said. "Plus, he was at a high risk of infection because he had an open wound and they had to keep it open."

Merrill took his doctors' advice and had the leg amputated from the knee down. He has been in Edmonton for two months at Glenrose rehabilitation hospital preparing to return to Yellowknife with a new leg built and prepared by a prosthetic clinic in Edmonton.

"They set me up with the clinic that gets me my new leg," he said. "They casted me and fitted it and put it together. He called me the next day when it was ready and I went to pick it up."

Randy Berg, who does prosthetic work for Glenrose Hospital, said his experience with Merrill's case and the territorial Department of Health and Social Services is something he has never seen in his 17-year career in prosthetic development.

"They told me there was no coverage for him," he said. "They didn't give me any reason why. I was shocked. In all my time working with prosthetics I can't say I have seen a situation like this."

Northwest Territories health care covers prosthetic limbs where amputation is caused by disease such as gangrene or diabetes and for patients over the age of 60 or patients who are in a financial situation where they can't afford to purchase the limb. Assistant deputy health minister Dana Heidi said he couldn't speak specifically to Merrill's case due to privacy concerns, adding they have a process in place and they believe the application was processed in a timely manner, and dealt with accordingly.

"I don't know when the application came in to our people but it does take time to determine their eligibility," he said.

"If I was in my house and it caught on fire and I lost my leg it wouldn't be covered," Haward said. "I would have to pay for it myself and it's not cheap."

Haward said he attempted to contact the NWT health minister directly for help but to no avail.

"I tried to speak to Sandy Lee herself but they (cabinet ministers) don't work like that," she said.

When asked about Merrill's situation, Lee refused to comment and said someone from her department would provide some insight. No information was provided at press time.

"It's not like this was an overnight thing," Merrill said. "They'd been telling me it was covered and then all of a sudden it isn't. It's been over a month now and I just found out the leg isn't going to be covered. I don't understand why it took them so long to come to this decision when I told them quite a while ago about the situation. I might have thought about things differently had I known from the beginning I wasn't going to be covered."

After three months in Alberta, Merrill will be eligible for Alberta health care coverage, which covers the cost of prosthetic limbs regardless of the situation. His team of doctors and a social worker are looking into this possibility to help Merrill get his leg.

The rehabilitation Merrill is going through is covered under territorial health care, but the $11,000 bill for the new leg and any future work or rehabilitation with the leg will have to be covered by Merrill and his family. Merrill and his wife Yvonne have five children and are owners of Arctic Janitorial Services. Without his leg he will be unable to go back to work.

"He shouldn't have to worry about the financial part of it all right now," said his wife. "It's like losing a person that's very close to you and it's frustrating to him and it's even more frustrating that he's put his family under a huge financial strain."

"I was dealing with enough issues with not having a leg and I was just starting to get that fixed up," Merrill said. "I was a wreck for a couple days after that trying to figure out how to come up with $11,000 in 30 days. Right now, I have no idea what I'm going to do. It's a lot of money to come up with in a short period of time.

"I'm really stuck in a hard place."