She lost her hands and feet to frostbite, but this Sask. woman calls her amputations a 'blessing'

Patricia Beston-Fayant says people sometimes look at her strangely when she tells them she's grateful her hands and feet were amputated. 

That loss, she says, brought back something she chased for 10 years without success — sobriety.

"I haven't been this happy in so long. So if this is how I have to be happy, then I don't really care really, because at least I'm still alive," she said with a smile.

Her family calls her survival a miracle, after she was exposed to Saskatchewan's brutal December cold for days with no shelter. 

She's one of a growing number of Saskatchewan people who have had frostbite amputations in the last two years — something advocates say could be driven by an opioid crisis and homelessness. 

Beston-Fayant has faced both herself. 

She first started experimenting with drugs at 18, beginning with cocaine, hydromorphone and oxycodone, and then moving to fentanyl and crystal methamphetamine. Her mother struggled to support her daughter through her addiction.

"I always would pop in there all messed up on drugs and just wasn't healthy for my kid and my mom at the time, so they moved to Calgary, and then my safe haven was gone. I had nowhere to go."

In late 2021, the winter after her mother left, Beston-Fayant was deep in her addictions, homeless and suffering dope sickness.

She believes it was Dec. 22, 2021, when she went to look for a friend to help her get some drugs, even though wind chill made it feel somewhere in the –40 range at the time, she said.

"It was damn cold, I remember that," she said. "I crawled over … [my friend's] balcony, waiting for her, and that's where I fell asleep."

Beston-Fayant passed out wearing just a coat and steel-toe boots. She remembers waking up days after that — on Christmas Day — still on the balcony, freezing.

With some effort, she started kicking the balcony and yelling — catching the attention of a passerby who called an ambulance.

"All I remember is them pulling me up and cutting my clothes off, and then I woke up after my coma."