Family leaves Labrador, goes into debt to pay for son’s eyesight-saving surgery

A Labrador family was forced to move to Newfoundland after they say the provincial government refused to cover the cost of sight-saving eye surgery for their adult son or cover travel costs for medical appointments.

“Moving from Labrador to Gander was one of the hardest things we’ve ever had to do,” Melissa Powell told The Independent in a recent interview. Powell and her partner Jeremy Froude left their home in North West River last December and moved to the Central Newfoundland town so they could afford to bring their 30-year-old son Micah to future eye appointments in St. John’s.

The family says the move was necessary since they couldn’t afford flights out of Labrador and the cost of accommodations, twice a year for the foreseeable future. Powell estimates the family has spent more than $20,000 out of pocket so far for the eye surgeries, travel, and accommodations.

It’s been a life-changing experience, “leaving behind our home, family and friends to move to somewhere we knew no one,” Powell said, explaining the family now has to pay double their usual household bills since they still pay their mortgage and bills for their Labrador home. Powell lived in North West River her entire life prior to the move.

In August 2025, Micah, who has Asperger’s, was diagnosed with keratoconus, a condition in which the cornea thins and bulges into a cone shape. He was told he needed a procedure known as corneal cross-linking to prevent his eyesight from worsening. Without the procedure, patients with keratoconus can go blind or deteriorate to the point of requiring a cornea transplant.

Micah also needed an advanced laser eye surgery procedure called a Topography-Guided Custom Ablation Treatment, or TCAT, on both eyes. In the end, the family paid $5,400 to the Jackman Eye Institute, a private eye care clinic in St John’s — and the province’s only clinic offering TCAT procedures — for the four treatments. Jackman is the only facility in Newfoundland and Labrador that performs corneal cross-linking. 

Micah underwent surgery for his right eye last August, and for his left eye in February.

No MCP coverage

In other circumstances, medical travel in Newfoundland and Labrador is covered by the province’s Medical Transportation Assistance Program. But that program only covers travel for procedures insured by the province’s Medical Care Plan (MCP). If a procedure isn’t covered, then patients must pay out of pocket for costs associated with the medical care and travel.

The province’s Department of Health and Community Services said in an emailed statement that corneal cross-linking isn’t covered by MCP because the government has not yet negotiated a fee with the Newfoundland and Labrador Medical Association under the Canada Health Act. A spokesperson for the department also said corneal cross-linking was not part of the government and the NLMA’s recent two-and-a-half-year negotiations for a new agreement.

They also said negotiations with the NLMA are “protected from disclosure” under the province’s access to information legislation, “to ensure the integrity of those negotiations as well as protect the financial interest of government.

“As a result, the Department cannot provide further details about the negotiations.”

Without the coverage, the family has taken on the expenses, including the cost of the procedures. They’ve also received support from community members in North West River, who have fundraised for the family. Even with that support though, the family says it has taken out two loans, and Froude has dipped into his pension fund, to cover the cost of the operations, plane tickets, and accommodations.

Earlier this year, political and public outrage followed revelations that a staffer in Premier Tony Wakeham’s office was earning a six-figure salary paid from the province’s MCP budget. Powell couldn’t understand why MCP could cover someone’s salary but not pay to save her son’s eyesight. “It was pretty upsetting to know MCP won’t cover surgeries like Micah’s and we had to move from home to afford his procedures, but it’s ok for someone to gain financial wealth in wages from money that should be used to benefit medical treatments,” she said.

Now that they are living in Gander to minimize further financial strain, the family is renting out its home in North West River and going through the pains of adjusting to a new life.

Micah’s eyesight 

Micah has always struggled with his eyesight, Powell said, explaining she and Froude learned their son had poor eyesight when he was six months old. Just after he turned one, he already had his first pair of glasses.

“He didn’t mind wearing glasses when we gave [them] to him at 13 months, because he could actually see. He could finally pick out things around him,” Powell recalled. But within a matter of months, Micah had trouble seeing again. 

Micah frequently had to change his prescription glasses as he got older. “We always knew when the glasses no longer worked, because Micah would take them and crack them in half,” Powell said.

Then, in July 2025, something alarming happened. Micah told Powell he was experiencing bad headaches and had trouble with his vision, even with his glasses.

Happy Valley-Goose Bay, the largest town in Central Labrador, doesn’t have a full time ophthalmologist. So Micah’s family made an urgent seven-hour drive to Labrador City to see an eye specialist, where they received shocking news.

“The ophthalmologist looked over at Jeremy and said, ‘It’s bad. It’s really really bad,’” Powell recalled.

Micah was referred to a specialist at the Jackman Eye Institute in St. John’s, where in August 2025 Micah was diagnosed with keratoconus and told he required the corneal cross-linking procedure.

The Jackman Eye Institute has been trying to convince the provincial government for 20 years to cover the cost of corneal cross-linking, says to Kristen Oldford, the clinic’s manager of refractive/surgical counseling. Oldford says the institute does 15-20 corneal cross-linking procedures a year, going back to 2008, when it began offering the surgery.

She told The Independent the procedure typically costs between $1,200 and $1,500 per eye.

Why MCP doesn’t cover corneal cross-linking

If the family neglected to address Micah’s eye condition, he might have eventually required a cornea transplant, which is a riskier and more costly procedure. Incidentally, cornea transplants are covered by MCP. “It doesn’t make sense why MCP isn’t covering the procedure,” said Froude. “This is a preventative measure, but if it goes to a corrective procedure it will cost much more.”

Another potential outcome, Froude explained, is that Micah could have lost his eyesight altogether, in which case he would need other forms of government assistance.

Oldford says the Jackman Eye Institute has received little explanation from the government as to why corneal cross-linking isn’t covered under MCP. “Their reasoning is that cornea transplants are covered under MCP, which is what would fix the issues cornea cross-linking will fix.”

Powell said she was rejected by a national charity that helps subsidize medical travel since the procedure isn’t covered by MCP. Flying in and out of Labrador is so expensive that it’s an even greater expense for the family than the procedure itself.

Froude is incensed his family had to move because the medical system failed them. “Why should we have to do that when the government can offer assistance to everyone else for medical travel? What makes my son, who has a disability certificate, any different?”

Lela Evans represents the Torngat Mountains riding in northern Labrador and is the province’s health minister.

The family contacted Evans about the matter last fall, when Evans was still a member of the opposition. The family felt its own MHA at the time, Perry Trimper, and then-Labrador Affairs Minister Lisa Dempster, weren’t doing enough to advocate for Micah.

“I have not given up my advocacy. I’m going back now to see what can be done,” Evans told The Independent in December, adding any changes would not retroactively help Micah and his family. “We have to look at whether this is something MCP should be insuring.”

Evans said politicians can’t demand that certain procedures be covered since those decisions are made by panels of medical experts. “As minister, I can’t direct them to cover something. There is a huge review process where they look at the evidence,” she said.

Evans said the province has to walk a fine line when it comes to covering procedures not offered by the public healthcare system. If they do, that would represent a step toward privatization. “Right now, Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services does not have the ability to perform this procedure in our provincial hospitals,” she explained, adding she has to “be careful” that she’s not “eroding public health care.”

A more colourful world

Even half a year after the move to Gander, Melissa, Micah and Jeremy are still adjusting to new surroundings and new routines.

“Jeremy had to give up a job where he was able to come home at the end of every day, to working a rotational job, where he can only be here one week out of a month,” Powell explained. “The hardest part is Micah had few friends and he left behind those few close friends he’s had since high school.”

Despite the financial and other stresses the ordeal has caused, the change to Micah’s quality of life has made the hard journey worthwhile. After Micah had his first eye fixed, the results were astonishing for his mother. Powell’s voice cracked with emotion as she described the sights her son is seeing for the first time in his 30 years.

“We went outside and he said, ‘Holy shit Mom, grass is that bright?” And then he said, “Mom, the sky is blue.”

As it turns out, the hues Micah had been seeing in the past were muted, and now his world is much more colourful.