Excruciating pain, interminable waits take mental-health toll on Manitobans waiting for joint-replacement surgery

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This article was published 17/01/2024 (599 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cynthia Carr suffered with agonizing pain for seven long months before getting hip-replacement surgery.

Not surprisingly, Carr says the unrelenting pain and uncertainty — until she had the procedure over the Christmas holidays — negatively affected her mental health.

“You think you understand what it would be like to live in constant pain, but you don’t,” she said.

“You are in pain all the time and you can’t do what you want to do. It leads to chronic sleep deprivation. The last six months before surgery I was in constant pain all the time.

“I don’t know how much longer I could have been OK.”

And Carr is not alone.

Years-long wait times, and the spectre of surgeries scheduled, cancelled and rescheduled continue to take a significant toll on the mental health of Manitobans.

Roseanne Milburn has been waiting — in increasing discomfort — six years for a knee replacement. Her family doctor has made more than one referral for her, but she doesn’t know, at this point, if she’s even on the wait list for surgery.

“I wake up, and if my leg is straight it locks, so I can’t even move it,” Milburn said, becoming emotional. “I have to bend my knee like I’m breaking it — with all the pain — just to get out of bed. This is ridiculous, I can’t take this anymore.

“I suffer from PTSD because of this. I told my husband, ‘If this is my life, I can’t take it anymore.”

Milburn, 60, who has a walker and uses a bench in the shower, was forced to retire early, in 2021, because of her condition.

“I saw a surgeon three years ago and he said thousands of people are on the waiting list — that’s all I’ve heard,” she said.

Milburn said her doctor also sent a referral to the Boundary Trails Hospital located in the Winkler-Morden area last year.

“Last March they said I’d see a doctor in July and I would have my knee replaced in January,” she said. “Well, it is now January and I haven’t even had my consultation yet. And, when I phoned there, and said I had been waiting six years (a woman) told me, ‘Well, you haven’t been waiting six years with us.’”

A Shared Health spokesperson said surgery candidates are put on a wait list if their referral is received and processed by the central intake for hip and knee joint replacement office, but the process can be impacted by availability, in some cases, of surgeons in some communities to meet for consultations.

“Surgical and diagnostic capacity is being created within our province’s health-care system, with recent investments that will allow for increased surgical slates in Winnipeg and Brandon as well as new MRI services for the North,” the spokesperson said.

Now Milburn fears that with plans later this year to move closer to her adult children in Alberta, she will go there without a new knee and have to start from scratch on a new waiting list in that province.

“I don’t have a quality of life. I want to do yard work and gardening, but I can’t go down on my knees. I don’t know what to do. I’ve done everything I can.”

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara is trying to help.

“This is deeply concerning,” Asagwara said, adding the Health Department has been advised of Milburn’s case.

“Years of cuts have created a monumental challenge in our health-care system… our work has just started and it’s all in service of Manitobans like this patient, who deserve better than what the previous government delivered for years.”

Carr’s hip dysplasia was so advanced she went from diagnosis to surgery in just over a year.

“I went to see my doctor for a prescription renewal and the first thing he said was, ‘Why are you limping?’” she said. “I thought it was sciatica or nerve pain… don’t diagnose yourself.”

During the months before surgery Carr, a self-employed epidemiologist, endured pain so relentless that it made working difficult. That led to fears of draining her savings and getting behind on her mortgage and other bills.

When she arrived at the hospital for her scheduled day surgery on Dec. 28, she was told the previous day’s entire slate of surgeries had been cancelled because there were no beds available.

“The mental and physical health of patients who thought they were finally at the start of their healing journey only to be told the wait would be longer… I don’t know how I would have found the strength to cope much longer,” she said.

The miserable pain she’d been living with was gone when she woke up after the procedure.

“There was pain from the incision, but not the hip pain I had before,” she said. “By the afternoon, the therapist was having me walk up two steps; I couldn’t even do that the morning I went for surgery.”

Carr said she has heard about a patient scheduled for surgery who was already in a hospital gown when she was told her procedure had been cancelled and went home, only to be contacted to return as the operation could be performed.

“I look at that as a success story,” she said. “It shows they are continually looking at, ‘How can we get on top of this surgical backlog’ all the time. My surgery was a gift. I’m feeling excited and grateful now.”

Then the epidemiologist in Carr emerged, offering advice to Manitobans to help the situation.

“I didn’t get sick before surgery, but I can’t control others getting sick so they need a bed in hospital and surgeries get cancelled,” she said. “What we do affects others. Vaccination, consider wearing a mask, stay home when sick. All of these can help so you don’t affect someone you don’t know.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca