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A nine-year-old has been waiting for about two years for a surgery that would allow her to go back to being a normal kid.
Octavia Kerr was seven when she was diagnosed by her ear, nose and throat surgeon in 2024 as having fluid leaking into her lungs from her ears, causing inflammation in her lungs and constant coughing.
Kerr’s mom Cassie Reid said the doctors haven’t figured out what is causing it, but was told that a surgery to get tubes in Kerr’s ears would help her daughter stop coughing.
Reid described it as similar to a chronic whooping cough.
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“She coughs until she pukes and she cries in her sleep,” Reid said. “It sometimes scares me how hard she coughs, because it sounds like she has completely lost the ability to breathe.”
Kerr uses two different inhalers, one twice a day until she is able to have surgery, the other four times a day.
According to Reid, speaking at the Sask. NDP Riversdale office in Saskatoon on Monday, the amount of work and school she and her daughter have both missed is significant as a result of her health journey, and Kerr has yet to be even added to a wait list for surgery.
Saskatchewan NDP MLA, Keith Jorgenson, alongside Cassie Reid, at the NDP’s Saskatoon Riversdale office on March 16, 2026. (Libby Gray/650 CKOM)
“The Sask. Party is failing Cassie’s family, is failing the people of Saskatchewan and we honestly deserve better than that,” said Keith Jorgenson, NDP MLA for Saskatoon Churchill-Wildwood.
Jorgenson said according to the Saskatchewan Health Authority about 17,000 patients in Saskatchewan have been waiting longer than three months for surgery, but added that numbers never tell the whole story.
“They never tell us the story about what it means to wait in Saskatchewan for surgery.”
Jorgenson said Reid’s story paints a portrait of parents missing work, children missing school, not being able to fully participate in normal life activities and constant physical discomfort.
“It means that the people of Saskatchewan, such as Cassie’s daughter, can’t meet their full potential,” he said.
“(Kerr’s) mom has to hear her cough and choke at night because she can barely breathe because she’s (been) waiting almost two years for surgery.”
Reid said until the fluid is stopped, her daughter’s coughing won’t stop. It comes in fits for two to four weeks at a time. Kerr might also need her adenoids removed, but nothing more can be known until her daughter is able to have the surgery she needs.
Kerr was first referred for care in April 2024 and by October 2024 had seen an ENT surgeon and discussed setting up the surgery. Reid was told to expect a follow-up call from the surgeon in December 2024 or January 2025, but it never came.
In June 2025, they learned their ENT was going on leave for a year or longer.
Despite repeated follow ups for her daughter to see a new surgeon and to have her procedure added to the surgical wait list, Reid said that has yet to happen.
“Never heard anything back since then,” she said.
Day-to-day impact significant
Reid said her daughter is an active child who simply cannot do the things she wants to do anymore because of her condition.
Sports and gym class are off the table and even when it comes to running around the house, Reid regularly has to instruct her daughter to sit down and rest.
“The inhalers pretty much keep her relatively stable during the days,” Reid said.
“(During) her flare ups and stuff, though, when it gets really bad, we’re either not going to school, or I have to call ahead of time to the school and say there’s no outside, there’s no gym. She can’t today.”
Reid called her daughter “resilient,” but noted that her spirits are dampened when she is constantly told she can’t go out or participate in normal activities — “where we have to sacrifice other things because her cough is just too bad that day.”
There’s no pattern to the cycle of flare ups her daughter experiences, Reid said.
Reid said in a perfect world her daughter could get the surgery she needs quickly and start being weaned off of her inhalers.
Jorgenson said this is one of a number of stories the NDP keeps hearing about long waiting periods for people in the province who need surgery.
“The Sask. Party has promised a number of times they would reduce wait lists to the point that 90 per cent of people would have their surgery within three months, and we have a young child now waiting almost two years for surgery,” Jorgenson said.
Last week, Premier Scott Moe released the Patients First health care plan, in which surgical wait times are listed as a key priority for the Saskatchewan government. At the news conference on March 9, Moe said the new plan aims to reduce wait times for surgery to three months and lower diagnostic wait times to two months by 2028.
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