No one was searching for Verna Zwarich, 89, as she lay on the floor of a farm shed with a broken hip for three nights in freezing temperatures.
But the Saskatchewan woman never lost hope.
“I just thought about good things,” she told CTV Saskatoon. “I thought how nice and warm it would be to be home.”
Zwarich left her family home in Hanley, Sask. on Oct. 9 to do yard work at her farm, which she has been managing by herself.
While cleaning the yard, she fell and broke her hip. She crawled to her truck and tried to lift herself into the vehicle, but the pain was overwhelming. She was helpless and alone, with no cell phone and no family nearby.
She waited as cars drove by on a nearby gravel road, but no one stopped to help her.
“I thought surely somebody’s going to stop,” she said. “But they go so fast.”
Temperatures dropped as the day went on, and Zwarich managed to drag herself to a nearby shed where she stayed from Wednesday night until Saturday morning.
She found two thin blankets, but no food and no water. She fought off mice with a stick and listened as coyotes howled in the yard.
“People ask me, ‘Weren’t you scared?’ I said, ‘What? What of? I’m not scared of those mice; they’re not going to hurt me.’”
On Saturday morning, the day before Thanksgiving, Zwarich left the shed and crawled back to her truck. It wasn’t until around 10:30 p.m. that she was found by neighbours who had been asked by family members to search of her.
“My temperature was 26 (C) and I was really cold,” she said.
Zwarich was rushed to a Saskatoon hospital where she underwent an emergency operation on her hip. After weeks of recovery, she is now back home.
And the near-death experience hasn’t stopped her from wanting to get back to work. She says she’s looking forward to returning to the farm this spring, though this time with a cellphone.
With files from CTV Saskatoon’s John Baglieri
