A Canadian woman has been desperately seeking a surgical solution for her rare illness for eight years, only to be astonished when she was swiftly granted approval for euthanasia after just an hour-long consultation.

Jolene Van Alstine, a 45-year-old resident of Saskatchewan, has endured nearly ten years of suffering from normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism.

This debilitating condition has subjected her to intolerable pain, constant nausea, frequent vomiting, elevated body temperature, and significant weight gain. The illness has also severely affected her mental well-being, with her husband, Miles Sundeen, noting that her life is overshadowed by depression and a sense of hopelessness.

Despite numerous hospitalizations and several surgeries, Van Alstine remains in dire need of a specialized procedure to remove her parathyroid gland—an operation that no local doctor is equipped to perform, according to Sundeen.

Faced with unrelenting pain, Van Alstine applied for the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program and, reportedly, received approval to end her life this week.

Sundeen expressed frustration over the fact that navigating the process for euthanasia through the Canadian healthcare system proved more straightforward and faster than arranging the necessary surgery.

‘I’m not anti-MAiD. I’m a proponent of it, but it has to be in the right situation,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘When a person has an absolutely incurable disease and they’re going to be suffering for months and there is no hope whatsoever for treatment – if they don’t want to suffer, I understand that.’ 

But for Van Alstine, that is not the case. 

‘She doesn’t want to die, and I certainly don’t want her to die,’ Sundeen continued. ‘But she doesn’t want to go on – she’s suffering too much. The pain and discomfort she’s in is just incredible.’ 

Sundeen and Van Alstine have petitioned the government for help twice, but have still been unsuccessful in securing a surgery date and are frustrated by the repeated failures of the Canadian healthcare system.

‘I’ve tried everything in my power to advocate for her,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘And I know that we are not the only ones. There is myriad people out there that are being denied proper healthcare. We’re not special. It’s a very sad situation.’

American political commentator Glenn Beck has launched a campaign to help save Van Alstine’s life and has offered to pay for her to undergo the procedure in the US.

The Blaze Media chief executive discussed his outrage with the failures surrounding her case on social media.

‘This is the reality of “compassionate” progressive healthcare,’ he wrote on X. ‘Canada must end this insanity, and Americans can never let it spread here.’

Beck reportedly has surgeons on standby who are eager to help Van Alstine. 

Two hospitals in Florida have reportedly offered to take on her case and, according to Sundeen, are reviewing her medical files.

The couple are in the process of applying for passports so they can travel to the US. 

Sundeen, who said he has spoken directly to Beck, alleged the multimillionaire ‘offered not only to pay for the surgery or treatment, but whatever is required for Jolene.’ This allegedly includes travel, accommodation and a medevac, if needed.

‘If it wasn’t for Glenn Beck, none of this would have even broken open. And I would have been saying goodbye to Jolene in March or April,’ Sundeen continued.

‘It’s unbelievable. You can have a different country and different citizens and different people offer to do that when I can’t even get the bloody healthcare system to assist us here. It’s absolutely brutal.’

Van Alstine first became ill around 2015 and was referred to a number of specialists who were unable to properly diagnose her, Sundeen claimed.

‘She gained a great deal of weight in a very short period of time,’ he said. ‘I remember feeding her about three ounces of rice with a little steamed vegetables on top, for months and months… and she gained 30lbs in six weeks. 

‘It’s not normal, not for her caloric intake – which was 500 or 600 calories a day.’

She underwent gastric bypass surgery in 2019, but her symptoms did not subside. Van Alstine was referred to an endocrinologist in December that year. 

Sundeen said the endocrinologist conducted a series of tests and bloodwork, but could not figure out what was causing her pain, and by March 2020, she was no longer being serviced as a patient.

Van Alstine was admitted to the hospital three months later by her gynecologist after her parathyroid hormone levels skyrocketed to nearly 18 (normal levels are 7.2 and 7.8, according to health authorities).

A hospital surgeon diagnosed her with parathyroid disease and determined that she needed surgery. But the procedure was marked ‘elective’ and ‘not urgent’, so it took 13 months to receive the operation, Sundeen told the Daily Mail.

She finally underwent surgery in July 2021 and had multiple glands removed, but her hormone levels never decreased.

Van Alstine was referred to another doctor that December, but due to a backlog in cases, she was told she would have to wait three years for surgery, Sundeen claimed. 

‘She was so sick,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘We waited 11 months and were finally fed up.’

The couple went to the legislative building in November 2022 through the New Democratic Party (NDP) to urge the health minister to reduce hospital wait times.

Sundeen said his wife was given an appointment ten days after they petitioned the government, but the doctor to whom they were referred was not qualified to perform the surgery she required.

Van Alstine was passed around several specialists until one finally took up her case and performed a surgery to remove a portion of her thyroid in April 2023.

As with her first procedure, this surgery only provided temporary relief and Van Alstine was back on the operating table that October.

Her hormone levels dropped after the third surgery and remained somewhat normal for 14 months, but skyrocketed again in February last year.

It was determined that she needs her remaining parathyroid gland removed, but Sundeen said there is no surgeon in Saskatchewan who can perform the procedure.

She can seek treatment in another region of Canada, but cannot do so without a referral from an endocrinologist in her area – none of whom are currently accepting new patients, her husband said.

Van Alstine applied for MAiD in July after ‘being so ill for so long’ and reaching what Sundeen described as the ‘end of her rope.’

‘She hasn’t left the house except for medical appointments and hospital stays. She spent six months in the hospital [in 2024],’ he said.

‘You’ve got to imagine you’re lying on your couch. The vomiting and nausea are so bad for hours in the morning, and then [it subsides] just enough so that you can keep your medications down and are able to get up and go to the bathroom.’

Van Alstine’s friends have stopped visiting her and she is isolated to the point where she cannot stand to be awake any longer.

A clinician associated with the MAiD program came to their home in October to carry out an assessment. Her application was verbally approved on the spot and she was given an expected death date of January 7, Sundeen said.

‘He finished the assessment, was about to leave and said, “Jolene, you are approved,”‘ he recalled, adding that the doctor ‘even gave her a date that she could go forward with it if she wanted to.’

An alleged paperwork error has now delayed the process until March or April. Van Alstine will need to be assessed by two new clinicians before she can move forward with euthanasia, Sundeen said.

Van Alstine and Sundeen visited the Saskatchewan legislature again last month and desperately begged Canadian health minister Jeremy Cockrill for help. 

‘Every day I get up, and I’m sick to my stomach and I throw up, and I throw up,’ she told the legislature in November, 980 CJME reported. ‘I’m so sick, I don’t leave the house except to go to medical appointments, blood work or go to the hospital.’

Sundeen echoed her pain. 

‘I understand how long and how much she’s suffered and it’s horrific, the physical suffering, but it’s also the mental anguish,’ he said, according to a statement from the Saskatchewan NDP Caucus.

‘No hope – no hope for the future, no hope for any relief.’ 

The couple’s case went viral after Jared Clarke, the Saskatchewan NDP Opposition’s shadow minister for rural and remote health, called on the government to take action and urged Cockrill to meet with the family. 

They met earlier this month, but Sundeen claimed Cockrill was ‘benign’ about their situation.

He told the Daily Mail that Cockrill said he would support their efforts to seek care outside Saskatchewan and suggested five clinics they could try, but Sundeen said it has ‘really come to naught,’ adding, ‘They have not been very helpful.’

Cockrill’s office declined CBC’s request for comment on Van Alstine’s case, citing patient confidentiality, but said the provincial government ‘expresses its sincere sympathy for all patients who are suffering with a difficult health diagnosis.’

‘The Ministry of Health encourages all patients to continue working with their primary care providers to properly assess and determine the best path forward to ensure they receive timely access to high-quality healthcare,’ the statement added.

Beck, Cockrill’s office and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health did not respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.