'I can't let fear control me': After lung transplant, Kugluktuk woman shares message of strength

After a decade of waiting, Millie Kuliktana finally received the double lung transplant she desperately needed. Then, a global pandemic hit.

Now, Kuliktana is locked down in Edmonton, awaiting a time when it's safe for her to travel home to Kugluktuk, Nunavut.

Even though she's now among the Canadians most vulnerable to COVID-19, Kuliktana still speaks a message of strength.

"We didn't survive [the] transplant to give in to the virus," she told the host of CBC's Trailbreaker in an interview Wednesday morning.

"You don't know how scared I am, but I can't let fear control me."

Filling the days with 'good thoughts'

Kuliktana lived with pulmonary arterial hypertension for a decade before receiving a double lung transplant in an Edmonton hospital in February.

Before her surgery, she required a medical pump that infused medication into her body every minute.

But Kuliktana is well-practiced in making the best of a bad situation. Her illness didn't stop her teaching her language, Inuinnaqtun, and volunteering wherever she could.

Today, Kuliktana is still recovering from the surgery that gave her "another chance at life." She's sharing a small apartment in Edmonton with her son, who left a new job to act as her medical companion.

"He supports me, and I support him," she said. "He's the best companion I could have."

Because Kuliktana is still immunosuppressed, she said, "I can't expose myself anywhere."

Weekly visits to the hospital, once a source of comfort for her, have become "one of the scariest things."

"The feeling is changed," she said. "You don't want to be there. You don't want to go there."

Besides the hospital, her last outing was on March 5, when she gathered with her sister Edna, who is also immunosuppressed, for what they knew would be their last visit for a while.

"We try to fill our days with good thoughts," she said.

Singing hymns through her keyboard

Kuliktana fills the hours in isolation partly by helping two fellow church-goers digitize a hymn book of the late Arctic bishop John Sperry.

"We've divided the hymn book into sections, and every day we do a bit," she said.

Already, Kuliktana has digitized 80 songs.

"To read the hymns word by word as you try to understand it exactly … I take great comfort in that, and it gives me hope," she said. "I feel like I'm praying each time."

Kuliktana also keeps busy by sewing — but that might not last for long.

"I'm running out of sewing material," she said, laughing. "I may need to cut up my son's clothes!"

Kuliktana said she keeps her spirits high by thinking of her family.

"I want to go home to my grandchildren," she said. "They give me the most strength."

It's sad, she said, that they are stuck hundreds of kilometres away from each other. But "it gives me strength that I can do this, and so can my children," she said.

Her message to others?

"Learn something, do something new, but stay home," she said.

"I can't go home until this is all over, and I want to go home. I've been here long enough."