Donna Toll’s dying wish is to be home in Sault with family and beloved parrot, but over $30,000 is needed to get her home by air ambulance

Donna Toll, a Sault woman in palliative care in Alberta, has only days (perhaps hours) to live.

It is her wish to be flown home from Edmonton’s Grey Nuns Community Hospital to the Sault, to be surrounded in her final hours by her loved ones, including her four daughters, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren and Jake, her beloved 14-year-old parrot.

Because of hospital regulations concerning the presence of animals, the parrot is not allowed to be at Donna’s side.

Donna is suffering from a long, painful battle with cancer.

“Each hour she’s deteriorating,” daughter Tricia Turcotte told SooToday.

Because of the severity of her illness and her need for intensive care, Donna cannot be transported home by a conventional flight back to the Sault.

Tricia and her three sisters are appealing to the public to help with the $33,850 cost of flying Donna home by air ambulance through a Global Angel website link.

Global Angel, a charitable organization, can get Donna home to the Sault through the Angels of Flight program.

“They help people get their families home, all over the world,” Tricia said.

The public can donate and help bring Donna home by clicking here.

“We’re just looking for 33,000 people to give one dollar each,” Tricia said, her heartache clearly perceptible as she spoke with us Wednesday.

A GoFundMe site has also been set up.

To help Donna through GoFundMe, click here

Another of Donna’s daughters, Jodi-Lynne Gibb, a Sault Area Hospital emergency department registered nurse, “is pleading for the help she needs now for all the times she’s helped people in the Sault,” Tricia said.

“We want to get our mother back with her bird and meet her great-grandkids. My mother would give the shirt off her back to people. We just want to get her home,” Jodi-Lynne said.



