Strumming a few chords on her guitar is all music teacher Andrea Ritcey can manage right now, after seriously injuring her hand during the Thanksgiving Day long weekend.
The Nova Scotia woman, who is also recovering from stage 3 endometrial cancer, had to wait nearly two weeks for a much-needed surgery.
Now, she’s speaking out because she has seen first-hand how much of a “crisis” the province’s health-care system truly is.
“Having to wait 12 days to get assistance was really triggering,” she told Global News.
“The pain can’t be compared to anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. I was saying to my family, ‘I’m pretty tough. I’ve done chemo and radiation and I’ve birthed two babies.'”
Ritcey says she was preparing to host more than a dozen people for Thanksgiving dinner when she picked up a mason jar, and it shattered in her hand.
“It was bad. I severed an artery and a nerve and a muscle and I cut basically from the webbing of my hand,” she said.
She says she rushed to hospital after the accident and a doctor was able to clamp the artery and stich up the wound. She was told she required surgery and that 72 hours would be the ideal window to repair the nerve.
But her wait lasted much longer than 72 hours.
Ritcey says she her surgery was rescheduled more than two times, despite having to fast in preparation and also forego her medication each time.
“To think that Nova Scotia is in that state where we have not enough surgeons. People are getting bumped. I just think it’s dangerous for Nova Scotians,” she said.
She’s now facing a long road to recovery that could last six months or so. It’s left her wondering if an earlier surgery date would have improved her outcome.
“This is my livelihood. And I know everybody needs their hands for their own livelihood, but as a musician, it’s such a refined thing to need a finger, a thumb,” said Ritcey, who plays the piano and guitar, among other instruments.
“All of those parts are working parts that it’s really hard to recover from.”
‘This province is in a crisis’
In a statement to Global News, a spokesperson from Nova Scotia Health said while they can’t comment on specific cases for privacy reasons, their goal is to “provide the best care possible to our patients.”
“There are several factors that inform the selection of patients who are booked for surgery. Booking staff and surgeon’s offices work to assure that patients on the surgical wait list are ready for surgery and try to accommodate reasons that may impact a patient’s ability to have a successful outcome,” wrote Jennifer Lewandowski.
She went on to say that Nova Scotia Health’s surgical and endoscopy volumes have been up for two years in a row, and wait lists have decreased.
“NSH is also seeing positive trends for the percentage of patients having surgeries within targets and national benchmarks,” Lewandowski wrote.
Anyone who is concerned they didn’t receive appropriate care can contact Patient Relations.
For Ritcey, her experience is just the latest in a series of struggles with the health-care system.
She says last year, she went to the ER sick and in excruciating pain — with her yellow card in hand, which was provided by the province to notify staff of her cancer diagnosis and need for priority care.
“After eight hours, I felt like I couldn’t sit in the chair anymore,” she recalled.
“I thought about lying on the floor. I was terrified because it’s not clean. We ended up driving home.”
She’s concerned about her future — and the future of other Nova Scotians who need the health-care system.
“We are in a crisis. We really are. This province is in a crisis,” she said.