Kathleen Holding spent a week in darkness. The days blurred into nights and the nights dropped below zero. Holding cloistered herself in bed, crying between sleeps and trying her best to stave off morbid thoughts.

Some days she ate a bagel. Some days half a slice of pizza. Some days nothing. Left without power after the ice storm, Holding’s basement apartment in Scarborough became her hell.

The 39-year-old is largely immobile due to multiple sclerosis, and the scooter she uses outdoors froze in her shed on Dec. 21, the storm’s first day. (A neighbour helped her push it back in, where it became even more useless as it lost its charge.)

“It was cold, it didn’t matter,” she said Sunday. “Maybe not eating helped with my emotional basket case.”

The storm hit Holding’s heavily wooded Guildwood Parkway community the hardest. Holding has few friends, and her immediate family is dead, with just a schizophrenic brother remaining. She only had her dog to shoulder the darkness with nearly the entire neighbourhood moved away.

The 5-year-old Shar-Pei, Penny, was Holding’s anchor — a focus for her thoughts besides cold and loneliness. Holding said she would not have made it through the week if not for Penny.

Holding cannot walk more than two metres unsupported, but she persisted in walking Penny two to three times every day for about four houses down the street.

She held onto trees, railings and wires. Icicles fell on her head repeatedly and she herself fell up to six times a trip. And then, she dove straight into the blankets when she returned, only emerging to walk Penny again.

“I have nobody to bury me,” she said. “I can’t worry about myself because I’m the only one who worries about me.”

As darkness fell, Holding’s world shrank. Her first fellow tenant left the first day, while her second was barely around.

They gave her crackers, protein shakes and a bagel, but the cold had robbed Holding’s appetite.

Without heat, Holding’s condition got worse. Her joints were stiff with pain, and her lying in bed became more circumstance than choice.

“There was no sun to even shine down,” she said. “It was just ice cubes of cold.”

Power came back Christmas morning, and an elated Holding shoved a turkey into the oven and waited for her first hot meal in four days.

It turned out to be the last one she would have for two more days. Power went out right when the turkey got cooked. The Christmas present had come too brief.

Holding made a rare trip to a local convenience store on Friday, when a clerk asked about her and Holding cried.

“She got a pen and paper, and she was like, ‘I know you have nobody, and if there’s a way I could call you — what’s your phone number?” Holding said.

“And I’m crying and saying, ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. I have no phone.’ ”

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By chance, a childhood friend’s mother was in the store, and invited Holding to stay. She had a tuna sandwich and chicken noodle soup that night.

Holding got her power back Saturday afternoon. She commended the Toronto Hydro workers for working swiftly to restore her power, but blamed the city for the fallen trees that cut it off, stating “the trees should have been cut years ago.”

Everything is not back to normal, however. Holding is no more mobile than she was during the storm, and still holds on to whatever she can while walking Penny — her scooter, damaged by the cold, still does not work.