Retired Winnipeg firefighter Rick Sterzer spent nearly five weeks at St. Boniface Hospital as a COVID-19 patient.
Though a first responder himself, Sterzer said his hospital stay has taken his appreciation for front-line staff to a new level.
“Being a patient opened my eyes to see what kind of person you have to be in these roles. The compassion they have is something you cannot teach.”
“I will never see them again in the same way.”
In hockey, if a goaltender has good form, the saves follow. It is equally true when it comes to saving a life. Just ask Rick St. Croix.
One early morning last December, the developmental goaltending coach for the AHL’s Manitoba Moose suffered a heart attack and collapsed at the airport while set to travel with the team on a road trip. It was the “widowmaker”, a 100 per cent blockage of the LAD (left anterior descending) artery. A widowmaker heart attack can stop the heart very fast and that is exactly what happened to St. Croix.
When he was hit in the head by a slapshot in November, 2019, Winnipeg Jets forward Bryan Little required “attention immediately” from the health care teams at St. Boniface Hospital and Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg.
“It was kind of a complicated injury,” says Little, who suffered a perforated ear drum and a brain bleed from the incident, in a game against the New Jersey Devils in the Manitoba capital. “The care from top-to-bottom was unbelievable.”
“(I) went to St. Boniface. They patched up my ear, gave me stitches. And then I went right to HSC.”
