A Dieppe woman who attended a family gathering in Sackville over Christmas, and was later diagnosed with COVID-19, is speaking out about her experience.

Heather Leblanc is from the Sackville area, and currently lives in Dieppe where she is director of the Canadian Physique Alliance.

Leblanc attended one gathering in Sackville on Christmas Day with 18 people.

Leblanc said that all of the people she had contact with in Sackville at Christmas have been contacted and tested, and none have contracted the disease since the gathering on Dec. 25.

Erica Butler spoke with Leblanc to find out more about her experience:

Leblanc said that in addition to Public Health contact tracers, her mother personally contacted all attendees at the Sackville gathering to inform them of her diagnosis.

This led to rumours circulating, in person and online, including one recently that the six cases announced on Jan. 3 included Sackville-based COVID-19 cases.

CHMA can’t verify the locations of any cases announced by the province, as public health does not disclose the locations of cases within health zones, but Leblanc is confident that no one she had contact with in Sackville ended up contracting COVID-19.

At the time of the Christmas gatherings, Leblanc was asymptomatic, though she said she did have mild cold symptoms about a week prior.

At first her husband, former Canadian bodybuilding champion Jean Leblanc, started feeling unwell, with “a bit of cough and a fever,” said Leblanc.

Leblanc said the couple didn’t think much of it, and weren’t that familiar with the COVID-19 symptoms at the time.

“We’re aware that COVID exists, but in our province the numbers are so low,” said Leblanc, “so a lot of us, we just don’t think it’s going to happen to us.”

“I think everybody thinks, oh, it won’t happen to me. But you know, it can happen to you and that’s what we found out," she said.

Later, Leblanc said she herself had a low grade fever and a sinus headache, but both cleared up within 36 hours.

Around or about Dec. 20, Leblanc said Jean started to get muscle aches, and although his cold symptoms had cleared up, he stayed around the house and did not feel good.

Heather, on the other hand, felt fine.

The couple decided Jean would remain home so as to avoid passing any cold or flu on to vulnerable relatives, and that Heather would participate in family Christmas gatherings.

On the afternoon of Christmas Day, Leblanc noticed she wasn’t able to taste her food very well. She also became more concerned about Jean, and decided to leave and come home.

“I still didn’t think that this could happen to me,” said Leblanc. “I was in a lot of disbelief.”

“Considering that we didn’t travel, we didn’t go anywhere. We’ve not been out of the province since last Christmas. We haven’t been anywhere, we haven’t been around anyone that’s been out of province… So there was not a lot of reasons to think that we would be at risk. But sadly, that is not the case with anyone,” said Leblanc.

Leblanc says that out of caution, she did wear a mask on Christmas Day. Her mother has a lung condition, and so they are typically careful about transmitting colds and flu.

The mask, Leblanc believes, could have saved her mother’s life.

“Hadn’t I worn a mask, perhaps she might have contracted it,” said Leblanc. “And if she contracted it, we don’t know what could have happened.”

While public health recommends non-medical masks in indoor public spaces and outdoor public spaces where distancing is not possible, they do stress that mask-wearing is not a substitute for isolation or distancing.

The chance that her mother could have been infected haunts Leblanc.

“There’s a lot of guilt in that,” she said. “I do have a lot of regrets. But we all make mistakes and, obviously, that was a big one for me.”

Leblanc returned home, and decided that after her concerns at Christmas dinner, she would get tested for COVID-19.

She went for a test at about 11:30 a.m. on Boxing Day. Meanwhile Jean’s symptoms got worse. By that afternoon, they were both at the Georges Dumont hospital. After a long wait, Jean was admitted to the ICU with pneumonia. And then test results for both Heather and Jean came back: they were both positive.

“From that point forward, it was the biggest nightmare of our entire lives,” said Leblanc. “I was escorted out of there, immediately. I didn’t have time to kiss my husband.”

Leblanc was worried for Jean because he has underlying heart issues.

“I was hysterical,” she said. “It felt like a death in the family. It was horrible.”

Leblanc called her mother immediately, and she in turn began to notify everyone who had been at the Sackville gathering.

“It was no more than probably seven to eight hours later, and people were posting on social media that a family had a gathering. And of course, they said 40 people, and they said I was down there three days in a row. So you know, they added things to the story,” said Leblanc.

“That’s how things escalate,” she added. “And then it causes an uproar, and the community starts to lash out. They start to get angry.”

Leblanc said she doesn’t blame people for panicking. Part of the issue, she said, is that while public health aims for confidentiality, and there really isn’t any, particularly in a small town.

Ironically, more information coming from public health could have helped Leblanc’s situation, because it wasn’t until Zone 1 cases started to get reported on Jan. 3, that rumours of spread in Sackville ramped up.

“They should be reporting numbers in each community,” said Leblanc. “Not just the zone. Because Zone 1 has a big area to cover.”

Leblanc said she now understands why people would hide the truth or even lie to public health.

“Because of the humiliation and the blaming and shaming,” said Leblanc.

Leblanc said that after her diagnosis, she and her family did everything right.

“Everybody did exactly what they were instructed to do,” she said. “And I think that we isolated that case.”

“Everybody abided by public health advice, rules, regulations,” she added. “Some of them weren’t happy about it,” she says, “but I was very proud of all of them for sticking it out.”

However rumours in Sackville persisted.

“A lot of people in the community started to accuse our family of infecting others in the community,” said Leblanc.

“Public health is planning for everyone to be honest,” she said. “But there’s no confidentiality, because of the people in the circle that is affected.”

“You know, one person tells one person, that person tells two people, those two people tell five people,” she added. “And eventually, you know, it gets everywhere.”

Friday marks the end of 14 days of self-isolation for Leblanc’s Sackville family. She said she feels a lot of guilt and responsibility over the trouble they faced, having to cancel further holiday plans, missing work and in some cases losing income.

Leblanc is hoping that her story will prompt more people not to ignore or deny possible symptoms, and encourage people to just go get tested.

“I wish I would have just brought my husband to the hospital before the holidays,” said Leblanc, “and we would have known, and none of this would have ever happened.”

And also, Leblanc wants her story to be a reminder of how important it is to be kind. “Be kind to others, because we need it right now," she said.

“Some of us are not going to make it through this. That’s why we need to be kind and we need to be understanding and stop blaming people for having a virus," she added.