Lives on hold with surgery delays

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This article was published 03/04/2021 (1875 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A slow resumption of non-emergency surgeries at the Women’s Hospital has left — among the hundreds of patients in pain — one woman making monthly trips to the emergency room because of labour-like agony when she menstruates.

Sara Corrigan has had a major surgery cancelled twice over the past six months because of staffing shortages related to the COVID-19 response.

As the 37-year-old waits for a new appointment, she continues to experience daily stabbing pains in her uterus, followed by a “never-ending contraction” that keeps her bed-ridden on a repetitive monthly cycle.

The surgery she is waiting for is supposed to completely relieve the fatigue and painful suffering that has prevented her from doing much work, being active or spending time with her two children since the summertime.

“If it’s not life or limb, we don’t seem to matter and our whole lives are put on hold. The scary thing about it is I currently have no date. I keep having this light at the end of the tunnel (disappear) and I feel like I’m in a void, completely abandoned by my province, with zero options,” Corrigan told the Free Press.

Hundreds of patients at the Women’s Hospital are in similar situations, unsure of when they’ll be able to receive life-changing surgeries, as a result of nurses being moved to critical care units elsewhere to treat patients with COVID-19 back in November.

Manitoba started to slowly ramp up elective surgeries in early January 2021, after months of cancellations amid the reshuffling of resources during the pandemic. At the time, more than 11,000 surgeries had been backlogged since the first case of the virus arrived in Manitoba.

“Our return of surgical slates to Women’s Hospital has been slow compared to many other sites and is disproportionately affecting women awaiting major surgery,” said Dr. Margaret Burnett, head of gynecology at the Women’s Hospital, in an email statement.

Burnett said the hospital typically has 48 to 52 slates per month, but is looking at only 28 to 30 throughout April and May. While cancer patients have mostly been accommodated, she said women with anemia due to bleeding, significant pain, or pelvic organic prolapse, among other major concerns, have had surgeries delayed.

(Urgent gynecological surgeries are typically defined by things such as “malignancy, transfusion-dependent bleeding or other serious conditions,” according to Shared Health.)

The post-operative unit remains “severely understaffed,” so most major surgeries are not possible at the moment, Burnett added.

Doctors Manitoba spokesman Keir Johnson said some specialists have contacted the organization with concerns about resources being redistributed in an unequal way to resume non-life-threatening procedures across the system.

The situation is frustrating for physicians and more importantly, their patients, Johnson said.

A general obstetrician-gynecologist at the Women’s Hospital said practitioners called on the province and Shared Health to supply more resources for an equitable resumption of surgeries — and the hospital received more resources, in response.

Dr. Michael Boroditsky said dozens of his patients are still waiting for increased capacity so they can get surgery. Boroditsky called the situation “awful.”

“It’s not an easy answer to decide what surgery is more important than another when you’re not dealing with something that’s life threatening. It’s not black and white,” he said, about gauging quality-of-life in such decisions.

A spokesperson for Shared Health said in a statement Friday reductions in surgical activity have occurred to varying degrees throughout the pandemic, as the health-care system responds to surges in acute care need and complies with infection prevention and control recommendations.

“We recognize the postponement of surgeries, while necessary, have had a significant impact on both the physical and mental well-being of patients. We are sympathetic to what patients waiting for surgeries deemed to be non-urgent to their long-term health are going through,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that several staff who were redeployed during the pandemic have returned to the women’s health surgery program in the past two weeks.

Meanwhile, Corrigan said she feels like a “second-class citizen,” knowing non-emergency operation units outside the Women’s Hospital have greater capacity to resume surgeries.

“I’m just in constant pain… I end up in the ER on the worst days and all they can do is medicate me… My whole stomach lining has been eaten away with these drugs,” she said, before tearing up during an interview.

Corrigan is organizing a rally outside the hospital Saturday at 2:30 p.m. to call for more nurses to be reallocated so more women can get their long-awaited surgeries.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie