Brian & Linda's Medical Expenses

I am setting-up this campaign for a dear colleague Brian Madden and his wife Linda Madden. Brian has been working with us here at Global Affairs Canada since 1990 as the Alternate COMSEC Custodian. Many of you will know him as the fellow who provided you the COMSEC briefing before your posting abroad, and generally answers your COMSEC questions or hounds you to file your COMSEC paperwork :) .  


I will do my best to elaborate Brian and Linda’s situation here:

Around October of 2015, Brian was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease (inflammation of the bowel and intestinal tract). He had to undergo surgical procedure, which was followed by a long recovery session.

However before even before Brian was fully able to recover, Linda fell ill. In February 2016, Linda had trouble breathing and had to go to the hospital.

Doctors discovered blood clots in Linda’s lungs and while trying to discover the cause of the clots they discovered she had Colon Cancer.

Linda was sent home in early March after treating the blood clots.

In April 2016, Linda had her cancer surgery and the doctors successfully removed all the cancer tissue at the Ottawa General Hospital. By all counts that was good news. However, unfortunately for Linda her complications did not end there.

While recovering from her cancer surgery, Linda was doing physio in preparation to walk up twenty-one stairs to get to her apartment. Just before she was ready to go home the doctors took out all the staples used for stitching the wound. When she sat up her whole incision opened.

For the next ten weeks, she had to use a vacuum bandage to help the wound heel. When she went home in May 2016, she had to walk up the stairs at home. Over the next number of weeks, she healed lying in her bed.


In July Linda started noticing the feeling of pins and needles in her hands and feet. She also lost her appetite. On August 1st 2016, she was rushed back to the hospital. In the preceding two and half months she had lost over forty pounds. Doctor’s discovered that she was unable to feelings in her hands and legs. Subsequently, Linda lost five days due to delirium.

After undergoing many tests the consensus was that Linda had Guillain-Barré syndrome (body's immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system). A possible trigger might have been the cancer surgery. There is no known cure for Guillain-Barré syndrome. However, there are therapies that lessen the severity of the illness and accelerate the recovery in most patients.

Linda is now at the St. Vincent Hospital since October 2016. With physio she has been able to regain use of her hands even though she has no feelings in them. She is still unable to stand and must use an electric wheelchair for the rest of her life. As Brian and Linda’s apartment is not wheel chair accessible, they must move to a new larger place which may also have to be modified to make it more accessible.

Despite being sick himself Brian has been a dutiful husband, attending to Linda’s needs everyday at the hospital. In addition to working here at GAC, Brian also works at the Strathcona Legion (Bank/Walkley). As you can easily imagine, Brian is having an extremely difficult time working two jobs, tending to his wife and making enough to meet all the medical expenses.

Brian and Linda also have a daughter Heather and son Mathew.

The goal of this campaign is to raise $10,000 which can assist Brian and Linda with their medical expenses. This includes covering the cost of special electric wheel chair, modification to a home and other medical expenses. I hope you can freely donate to help Brian and Linda.