Destiny, reality, tragedy Angry, grieving mother, aunt despair over lack of drug-treatment options six months after promising young woman's fatal opioid overdose By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, May. 17, 2019

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/05/2019 (2118 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Shelly Taillieu always worried about what kind of call she’d get about her daughter, Destiny.

For most of her young life, her daughter struggled with mental illness. Drugs became a coping mechanism for Destiny; opioids, in particular, were a way to blot out her trauma and pain.

“I was worried she was in the river,” Shelly says. “One of the girls that goes missing, you know, and I won’t find her.”

“I think we were always scared something could happen but I think ultimately when it does happen, you still don’t think it’ll happen,” says Tammy Taillieu, Destiny’s aunt. “We talked that she would maybe overdose, or be murdered or be found somewhere.

“And then it happens, and your world stops.”

The Taillieu family’s world stopped on Nov. 3, 2018. Destiny had overdosed, but this time it didn’t look like she would survive.

She died in the hospital on Nov. 4, six days before her 23rd birthday, and six weeks before she was supposed to get a bed in a private residential treatment facility.

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Six months later, Destiny’s mother and aunt are in a coffee shop, trying to piece together the reasons for the young woman’s death.

They know the how — the cold, clinical facts of her chart, of course: cardiac arrest and aspiration following a drug overdose. But the why? That’s much harder to figure.

Some days, the grief is intolerable. “She’s my only daughter. My best friend. We were so close. I don’t know how it all happened that I couldn’t save her,” Shelly says.

Her forearms now bear tributes to her daughter. On the left is a scorpion for her Scorpio. On the right, in delicate script, are the words of Robert Munsch. I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.

Other days, Shelly is in what she calls advocate mode. Making calls, writing letters. She and Tammy want to tell Destiny’s story, and they want to see changes in how people struggling with addiction are treated by the systems that are supposed to help them. Destiny’s life was marked by trauma and mental illness, but she was also a strong, confident, driven young woman who graduated from high school a year early and was on track to finish her university degree.

“When she was sober, she was a better person than all of us,” Tammy says. “She was trying very hard to stay sober over the last few weeks leading up to her death. She struggled her last year.”

Readers of the Free Press first met Destiny in November of 2016, when opioids were still dominating headlines and the fentanyl crisis had yet to be eclipsed by a growing meth problem.

She was anonymous then, referred to only as “she.” Her future was bright, and she was concerned about prospective employers attaching her name to her struggles. But she felt it was important to advocate for herself and people like her. She wanted to talk about the realities of opioid addiction, and warn of the dangers of fentanyl. She was committed to her sobriety. And she was scared.

“There’s no doubt in my mind I don’t have another recovery in me,” she said at the time. “I just don’t. If I go back out there, I’ll die.”

Fast-forward to Oct. 17, 2018. Destiny had recently relapsed after a stint in detox. She left with her mom’s car. When she didn’t return or call her mother, Shelly reported her daughter missing and the car stolen.

“Remember: she just got out of detox five days before,” Tammy says, trailing off. “If you could go from detox to a treatment bed…?”

On Oct. 19, police found Destiny wandering around downtown with no shoes, no phone, and no car. Because Shelly lived outside the city, she had to borrow a car and meet police in St. Norbert to pick up her daughter. When Destiny got into the car, it was clear something was very wrong. The family would later learn she was in the throes of a drug-induced psychosis.

‘People do get better, they do recover– but they need the supports, though. Help needs to be there when people need it, otherwise they aren’t going to make it.’
— Tammy Taillieu

The RCMP were called and Destiny was taken to a hospital in Steinbach. Shelly obtained a court order for an involuntary medical examination and was relieved that, for the first time in days, her daughter would be held somewhere safe for a few days.

But Destiny was released after just 24 hours.

“When I picked her up, the nurse gave me a stack of cards for AFM (Addictions Foundation Manitoba) and crisis response,” Shelly recalls. “I said, ‘You know what? My daughter’s got those, I got them, we’ve got 100 of them. That’s not helping. You’re a nurse. You should be advocating for your patient.’”

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The five weeks leading up to Destiny’s death are just a snapshot of what life is like for the family of someone struggling with addiction — the toxic swirl of anger, stress, fear, exhaustion, frustration and helplessness. Shelly and Tammy Taillieu know other families are going through the same thing, and they know the gaps in the system can often feel more like chasms.

Shelly is pediatric nurse, and even she felt stymied by the medical system.

“I couldn’t get her access to anything,” Shelly says. “People think, ‘Oh you’re a nurse, you can get her in.’ Uh, no I can’t, and I don’t even know where the programs are.” Getting access to Destiny’s medical records has also been a frustrating journey.

“Destiny’s story is not the exception to the rule, it’s the rule,” Tammy says. “So, if we could identify the different gaps, because it’s not just one hospitalization. It’s going back a year, or two years. It’s repeatedly presenting at emergency departments that don’t care.”

To that end, Shelly believes that attitudes toward people with addictions need to change, beginning with the nurses and doctors in the emergency room.

“I can see those nurses and doctors being so pissed off and frustrated with the drug use because the ER is full of meth on Friday night and they’re all acting crazy, and doctors want to save lives and don’t really want to deal with addiction,” she says. “But addiction is an issue and this is where they go first. If you’re treating them like garbage, they might not go back.”

Wait times for beds in residential treatment facilities is another area of concern. In January, Tammy was shocked by media reports on figures the Manitoba Liberal party had obtained via a Freedom of Information request: the average wait time for residential addiction treatment in Winnipeg was 52 days for men, and 206 days for women.

According to the AFM, the current wait time for men in Winnipeg is 80 days, and 195 days for women.

“What’s the point of putting in someone in detox if they have nowhere to go after?” Tammy asks. And so, families turn to private treatment facilities, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Shelly previously paid $22,000 for private treatment.

Tammy also believes there is a disconnect between mental-health and addictions services. She’d like to see more integration of care, more trauma-informed care, as well as additional wrap-around supports such as transitional housing.

Both Taillieu women want families to open up about their individual struggles so that they may find support among each other.

“We’re all in our little silos trying to fight for change,” Tammy says. “I think people are naive if they think it can’t happen in their family.”

“That’s the problem,” Shelly says. “People aren’t open with it, so then there’s a stigma. You have to break the stigma, and if you can’t break the stigma, no one is going to get help and the system isn’t going to change if all these people who are losing their kids to opioids are scared to say, ‘My kid died of an opioid overdose and I want to demand change.’”

‘People think, ‘Oh you’re a nurse, you can get her in.’ Uh, no I can’t, and I don’t even know where the programs are.’
— Shelly Taillieu

The Taillieus have founded a Destiny Taillieu Memorial Scholarship at her alma mater, St. Norbert Collegiate. A benefit concert will also be held July 6 in her honour, with proceeds going to the forthcoming Bruce Oake Recovery Centre. But therein lies another gap; while the Taillieu family is happy to support the Oake project, it will be a men’s facility.

And so, their advocacy work continues. It won’t bring Destiny back, but it will keep her memory close.

“It makes me so angry that Destiny’s gone because I think she could have done exceptional things,” Tammy says. “People do get better, they do recover — but they need the supports, though. Help needs to be there when people need it, otherwise they aren’t going to make it.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti