Verna Zwarich says she is prepared to buy a cell phone.
It’s a concession the 89-year-old Hanley resident made last Tuesday, speaking from her bed at Royal University Hospital in Saskatoon. She was recovering from surgery to repair a broken hip.
A cell phone would not have spared Zwarich the operation she needed Sunday to fix her hip, but if she’d had that phone, then maybe the surgery could have occurred days earlier, preventing a four-day ordeal of hypothermia and dehydration as Zwarich lay in her farmyard northeast of Kenaston waiting for help.
“I prayed and prayed and prayed so much. It was a big help to have God on my side,” Zwarich said.
She looked and sounded surprisingly well for an elderly woman who’d spent days out in the cold without warm clothes, food and water.
She gives credit to God for her survival, however, Zwarich, who prides herself for a life of hard work, must also possess a mighty will to live. A strong stubborn streak likely didn’t hurt either.
“What an experience at my age. But I’m a strong person. I do all kinds of work on my own,” she said.
She was out at her beloved farm about 9-and-one-half miles northeast of Kenaston on Wednesday, Oct. 9, doing yard work, including putting away lawn ornaments. She was nearly finished with just two more ornaments to stash in the shed when at 2 p.m., as she was walking to her pickup truck, her right hip broke and she fell. (This injury happened to the same leg that she hurt a few years earlier when the riding lawnmower she uses to cut the grass in her farmyard fell off the bed of the truck onto her knee requiring a knee replacement.)
Her right leg useless, Zwarich said she tried to pull herself into the truck, but couldn’t reach anything to grip. As she lay near the truck, Zwarich said she watched as cars and a school bus drove by on the nearby road.
“I was waving for people to stop, but they go so fast and they don’t ever look. I was out in the open where they could see me,” she said.
She crawled to the house, but couldn’t raise herself up to open the door.
So, “I crawled over to the shed Wednesday night because I knew the door was open there. I kicked the door shut and I laid there for the rest of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.”
Zwarich said she found two “skinny little quilts” in the shed she was able to cover herself with, providing a slim bit of warmth during the frosty nights. There she laid for three nights and two days, listening to the mice scurrying about the shed all the while praying and hoping that help would come.
“I was so cold,” she said with a shudder.
Saturday it seemed her prayers were answered.
To read more please see the Oct. 21 print edition of The Davidson Leader.