Robert and Deborah Salmons are worried they could end up homeless.
Despite decades of experience in their fields and being well-known in the area for their own business, The Jam Guy, the couple struggles to make ends meet these days after a spinal surgery left Robert unable to work.
“If I don’t get this fixed, I’ll lose the business,” Robert said gesturing to the right side of his body, which has been weak since the surgery. “Our address could be our car. We may be living in our car.”
The couple launched The Jam Guy in 2014, selling jams and preserves at local farmers’ markets, quickly gaining popularity.
In additional to traditional flavours of jam, they also offer banana, pineapple and butter tart flavours, as well as apple sauce, sugar-free and vegan jams, plus preserved pickles, peppers, beets and onions.
The couple also shared their success by giving back to the community.
This year could see the shelves empty though, as Robert battles to recover from a procedure at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre’s Holland Bone and Joint program on Nov. 24, in which his L4 and L5 vertebrae had to be shaved in order to free a nerve pinched between his discs.
Originally, they expected he would be healed enough to walk and perform some lifting within four to six weeks — enough to begin preparations for the coming market season.
However, that hasn’t been the case and Robert can only stand for short periods of time, requiring a cane to walk even short distances around the house.
It’s a big shift for a man who is accustomed to keeping active.
In addition to working some of the nearby fields on the side, Robert said he also regularly went for 4.5-km speed walks around the marsh.
Deborah added that while she’s been cancer free since April 2023, there was a time during her treatments in 2021 that she was too ill to make it up the stairs, so Robert would carry her.
Now, he’s mostly housebound and enduring tremors from constant pain he described as “eight out of 10.”
Within 16 to 20 weeks he was expected to make a full recovery, but the couple say doctors later revised that forecast to as long as one year.
“It’s now a guessing game,” Deborah said.
Playing that game comes at a price, though, and the couple say they’ve already gone through their emergency savings and fallen behind on rent.
In addition to selling one of their two vehicles to help stay afloat, the couple had also hoped to rely on about $15,000 worth of bonds, but due to complications settling an estate, Deborah thinks it could be years before those funds are available.
In the meantime, Deborah has had little luck finding full-time work as an accountant, despite 40 years of experience.
She previously pivoted from full-time work to help with the jam business, dealing with one client consistently and one other as needed. But with her husband unable to work and her unable to run the business on her own, she’s looking to make up the difference.
Despite sending out between 200 and 300 resumes, and applying to a local accounting firm, she said she’s had no luck.
The only benefit is that she’s had more time to help Robert access appointments and negotiate the path to recovery, including advocating on his behalf with hospital staff and after-care providers — an unexpected task that has taken its toll on them both.
Difficulties in hospital
The trouble began about one week after Robert was discharged from surgery on Nov. 25. He began experiencing heart palpitations, before collapsing on the bedroom floor on Dec. 1.
“It felt like my heart was coming out of my chest,” he said.
Following the recommendations provided when they left Sunnybrook, Deborah said she called 911 and with the help of firefighters, paramedics were able to carry Robert out of the bedroom and get him into an ambulance bound for Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket.
Once there, he recalled he could do nothing but wait as he was confined to a stretcher.
According to Deborah, it wasn’t until Dec. 4 that Robert was able to get a bed at the hospital, and was unable to stand without his blood pressure dropping sharply, causing him to become dizzy.
While still a bit unsteady, medication prescribed by a doctor at the hospital had mostly brought his blood pressure under control and he was discharged on Dec. 6.
That was only a taste of how horribly busy the hospitals can be though.
By Dec. 26, the pain from Robert’s surgery had become so bad that Deborah drove him back to Sunnybrook for help, but the couple recall waiting in the emergency room (ER) for 30 hours before anyone could see him.
“It got so bad that I was in tears at Sunnybrook,” he said. “You have to cry in pain to get help.”
Even once a doctor was able to see Robert, the couple said a remedy remained elusive, and over the course of more than a week, the results of multiple tests — including an MRI, CT scan, blood tests and urine tests — continued to come back inconclusive.
One test to measure muscle response, an electromyography (EMG), remained unavailable and in the meantime, “they were slapping pills into me,” Robert recalled.
By Jan. 3, still without the EMG or any answers, Robert recalled the occupational therapist seemed intent on having him discharged, and made him walk up a flight of stairs as proof he was fit to leave.
“They forced me up the stairs with her hand on my back,” Robert said, adding that he felt he had no choice but pull himself along the railing or risk being pushed over.
Earlier that day, Deborah recalled asking the nurse if it was OK for her to head home and get some rest, as she had an upcoming meeting with a client. She was told Robert wouldn’t be discharged.
She only managed to get a couple hours sleep before Robert was calling to let her know he’d been discharged and asking her to come get him.
Upon returning to the hospital she said Robert didn’t seem much better and could hardly walk to the car, even with her help.
Deborah later attempted calling the hospital’s Office of Patient Experience to discuss the issues they encountered at the hospital, but said she received no help.
In the interest of protecting patient confidentiality, representatives from Sunnybrook were unable to comment on the specifics of care Robert received, but Idella Sturino, communications advisor, said they had no record of any patient waiting 30 hours for an initial assessment from a physician in their emergency department.
Wait times are an issue at hospitals across the province, and while Sturino acknowledged that Sunnybrook continues “to face pressures such as staffing challenges,” they still “take our responsibility to patients very seriously,” and “strive to provide outstanding and compassionate care.”
“As home to several complex care programs, including Canada’s largest trauma centre, we care for some of the sickest and most critically injured patients,” she said, adding that those with less urgent needs might wait longer to be seen, but since April 1, the average wait time to see a physician at the hospital’s ER is 4.2 hours.
While the time to each patient’s discharge, recovery and rehabilitation can vary, Sturino said the Holland program is “one of North America’s leading programs for musculoskeletal care,” and has seen a rise in urgent consults and surgical cases in recent years, with more than 5,440 surgical cases and 49,000 ambulatory visits during the 2022-23 fiscal year.
She recommended any patients with questions or feedback about their experience at the hospital contact their Office of the Patient Experience.
Difficulties out of hospital
Once they arrived home, the situation didn’t get much better, as Robert still struggled to walk and was enduring pain that made it difficult for him to get around the house or care for himself — he required assistance to get in and out of the bath, even standing in the kitchen long enough to prepare food proved dangerous and using the stairs alone was out of the question.
The couple had expected to have help dealing with the road to recovery from in-home care, but said Home and Community Care Support Services only approved Rob for two one-hour home care visits each week.
Deborah said she called the service to explain the situation and request more help, but was disappointed to hear her husband was disqualified due to his strong upper body, and that the service is dealing with a “national crisis.”
“Our medical system is broken very badly,” she said. “Where does the responsibility lie?”
Meanwhile, Robert has been pushing himself to become more independent, but even just accompanying his wife on trips to the store takes its toll on him, a situation that hasn’t been helped by the lack of physiotherapy offered by Home and Community Care Support Services, which told the couple he only qualified for four visits over two months.
Having encountered so many barriers to recovery has left Robert frustrated with health care in Ontario.
“I felt like an animal hit by a car and left on the road,” he said.
Robert admits the couple had previously considered purchasing a private health insurance plan, which may have been able to help secure more home care and physiotherapy, but at the time, they found it too expensive while also managing the ongoing costs of their own small business.
Representatives from Home and Community Care Services said they supported more than 651,850 patients between 2022 and 2023, but deferred all other questions — including what patients should do if they feel they aren’t receiving enough home care or physiotherapy — to the provincial Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care who did not respond in time for publication.
Some good news
More recently, their luck has finally started to turn around, and on Jan. 12, Robert was able to go for the EMG, the results of which he was able to discuss with his surgeon the following Tuesday, during the follow-up appointment for his Nov. 24 spinal surgery.
The news was good.
Not only did the test show his muscles are strong enough to be pushed during recovery, Robert said the doctor listened to all of their concerns about being discharged too soon and lacking access to after care.
After stepping out to speak to his team, Robert said the doctor returned with even more good news: he would be requesting Robert receive at least five home-care visits a week and additional physiotherapy.
“The first thing, right off the bat, he apologized for everything that had gone on,” Robert said. “I’m very impressed with him stepping up to the plate.”
The first physiotherapist appointment is set for Jan. 29, at which time Robert hopes to find out the best methods and just how hard he can safely push himself to recover.
After that, the couple are still waiting for appointments for Robert to see two more specialists — one to help deal with the pain, and another to examine potential trauma to his frontal lobe.
Until those dates have been set, his recovery time remains unknown.
“It’s all up in the air,” he said, adding that there’s only about a month and a half until his first market engagement of the year in Windsor on March 30.
In the meantime, the couple have set up a GoFundMe campaign to help cover their costs, and so far it has raised $2,715 of the $15,000 goal, a number based on the value of the bonds they can’t use.
For more information about The Jam Guy, visit thejamguy.com, or the company's social-media pages on Facebook or Instagram. To support the GoFundMe campaign, visit gofundme.com/f/uc3zv-need-financial-help.
