Rebuilding Trust in Systems

This is a four-part series in June 2026 on what happens when a patient has to leave their established healthcare in one country and move to another.

• Part 1: Healthcare and Disability Do Not Cross Borders – What I lost and what I rebuilt.
• Part 2: Why Patients Become Historians (And Why I Carry A Binder) – What I carried with me.
• Part 3 Rebuilding Trust in Systems – Who helped me rebuild my life and my healthcare.
• Part 4: The Proof of Rebuilding – The evidence that my new life is starting to take shape.

Rebuilding Trust in Systems

By now you are starting to see the full picture of what I’ve been rebuilding in the past six months after leaving Taiwan. This article is about how I rebuilt trust in systems. I’m not talking about people in general. I’m talking about the actual systems I needed to focus on because that’s what I was forced to test when I landed in Canada.

When I arrived in Canada six months ago, I wasn’t just carrying boxes, cats, and medical records. I arrived scared and carrying uncertainty. Finding a family doctor seemed hopeless. I didn’t know whether specialists would accept my extensive medical history. Would I be able to access disability support having just spent 10 cruel years waiting for help in Taiwan?

I didn’t know whether disability supports would exist. Most of all, I didn’t know whether the systems I depended on would work. I had no idea whether anyone would understand the complexity of my situation.

As it turns out, very few people fully understand what I’ve lived through. And honestly, I don’t expect them to. My journey has been shaped by seventeen years in another country, complex chronic illness, disability, and a healthcare system that looks very different from Canada’s. What I have found, however, is people who are willing to listen and help me rebuild.

For years, I had built a life in Taiwan. It was a great, big, glamorous and beautiful life in a city of millions.

I was a respected and contributing member of the community. Hospitals and specialists spoke my language. I understood referral pathways and literally worked on a tiny team of six to change the law for foreign disabled residents of Taiwan. I understood the rules and cultural expectations in Taiwan and navigated them with ease.

Then, almost overnight, I found myself back in Canada trying to learn an entirely different system while managing chronic illness, disability, grief, financial uncertainty and poverty, and the practical realities of rebuilding my life.

Every appointment has felt like a test. All my referrals felt uncertain. Every form is high stakes.

I was used to being the person carrying everything: my records and timelines, the plans, the responsibility and the financial devastation that comes with your body breaking down.

What surprised me in Canada was how many people began helping me carry it within a month of my arrival.

I was very lucky to secure a family doctor who took me back. She is the star quarterback of my team and I didn’t even know it on my first appointment with her on January 27, 2025.

My family doctor became the foundation of my healthcare in Canada. Coming from Taiwan, I underestimated the role a family physician plays in Canadian healthcare. I don’t anymore.

Dr. S coordinated referrals and arranged testing. She booked me into immediate iron infusions and B12 shots. My EKG and first heart holter test happened within weeks of my appointment with her. I was handed the paperwork for a disability parking pass and had it within my hands in a matter of minutes. I was able to get my ODSP paperwork started because of her and then she finished it for me so I could submit it on March 31st.

Dr. S also took over managing my medications from Taiwan – a massive task given she doesn’t understand much about my medical history other than the giant binder I carry into each appointment. She has investigated and helped build a team around me.

I had to do a lot of heavy work, but Dr. S was right next to me and she never even let on how her big her role is in my well being.

None of that happened overnight, but it DID happen.

I’m awaiting ODSP and have one month to go and today I was just approved for dental care. Next month will be full of cardiology appointments. Dr. S also took the list of rheumatologists I gave to her and she pushed hard to get me in to see a specialist at the Ottawa Hospital.

Behind the scenes, I was spending full days on the phone being aggressively persistent with medical offices and refusing to disappear into the healthcare system again. I learned that lesson in Taiwan. NEVER AGAIN.

Social workers returned calls. Therapists listened and have arranged both trauma and crisis therapy for me. Advocates have offered guidance and support. Alex the Pharmacist has chased down medications for me.

Community organizations have stepped in to provide support, help us with rides, and help me find resources.

Every single professionals I met took my concerns seriously. They all told me I was minimizing what had happened to me and I was amazed that they thought that.

People showed up.

They didn’t show up all at once or perfectly, but consistently enough that something began to shift. This month I realized I had broken through the bottleneck. While I’m still doing 2-4 appointments a week, I have a caseworker who is helping me wrangle the never ending calls and appointments under control. I actually felt a little relief yesterday. There is a tiny prick of light at the end of this tunnel and that gives me hope.

I even managed to figure out a car and a ramp system for my power wheelchair. This was something I never dreamed was possible, but I did it! My new set of wheels is a disability friendly vehicle that takes my physical disabilities into consideration. It is suited to my body and it will take some stress off my family and friends.

For months, I viewed repatriation primarily through the lens of loss.

I lost my specialists. Taiwan, my home, is gone. The life I left behind cuts me to the core. Those losses are real.

But this week I found myself noticing something else.

I started noticing how much had quietly been rebuilt: a healthcare team, a growing support network, a better understanding of how Canadian systems worked, and, perhaps most importantly, the realization that I was no longer trying to navigate everything alone.

Repatriation forced me to rebuild many things. I’ve had to build healthcare, disability supports, income supports, community, routine, and my identity.

What I didn’t expect was that it would also require rebuilding my relationship with systems themselves. Learning where to ask for help, who can help, what support looks like and how it differs from Taiwan.

I landed a new job today and have three great clients and I’m learning about real estate, vacation property management, and medical transcribing.

Five months ago, I arrived carrying almost everything myself. Today, I am beginning to understand that rebuilding was never meant to be a solo project.

The systems are imperfect. It’s exhausting. The paperwork is endless. But I am no longer carrying the entire load alone. And that may be one of the most important things I have learned since coming home.

When I first arrived in Canada, every form, every appointment, and every phone call felt like another mountain to climb. Five months later, the mountains haven’t disappeared, but I’m no longer climbing them entirely on my own. That realization has changed the way I think about rebuilding. It isn’t a single moment of arrival.

It’s the slow accumulation of people, systems, opportunities, and hope until one day you look around and realize that life is beginning to take shape again.

For those of you following along closely, I will let you in on a few secrets.

I have a full guide on what happens with Ontario Works and ODSP when you’re new to Canada. I’ll be exploring these questions more deeply, I hope, through Wilfrid Laurier University’s Master of Social Work program.

Having been forced to rest and jump through endless hoops for healthcare and assistance, and literally not being allowed to earn more than $200 a month while I wait for ODSP lit a fire under my butt. I hope next spring I will be going back to university, this time as a mature student with significant physical disabilities.

My plan is to build on the skills I was using in Taiwan to help people here in Canada.