A Manitoba couple is coping with uncertainty around triple-bypass heart surgery that was cancelled at the last minute.
Joan Garbutt told 680 CJOB that surgery for her husband Steve was booked for Friday. But just hours before go-time, a call came cancelling it.
“We had travelled into Winnipeg. I cancelled all of my appointments at work and tried to shuffle everything around because you don’t get a lot of notice,” said Garbutt, who lives in Rapid City, Man., three hours from Winnipeg.
“We made that trip in. Steve was able to get his COVID test done for the pre-op. He was able to complete his bloodwork the day before, so we were thinking, this is great, now we’re ready to go — and with all the time we’ve been waiting, this is finally coming to an end.
“It’s going to be so great because he’s going to feel good for Christmas … and then just about 12 hours before we were supposed to take him in, we got the call that his surgery was cancelled. It’s a real let-down.”
Garbutt said they weren’t given much in the way of details, just to expect a call the next day. They stayed in the city in case Steve’s surgery would get rescheduled but were told on Saturday that all cardiac surgeries had been rescheduled. A new timeframe wasn’t given.
“One of my big concerns is weather,” she said. “If we get called and there’s terrible weather or road closures, how do we deal with that in a short time frame?”
“Part of me is even thinking, do we just pull up stakes and move to Winnipeg in the short-term just until he gets the call, so we don’t have to worry?”
Steve, a trucker, isn’t able to work while waiting for the surgery. And since he’s self-employed, he’s not eligible for unemployment or disability insurance.
Garbutt said her husband is classified as ‘non-urgent’ because he’s not actively having a heart attack. But that could definitely change.
“We know he has a 90 per cent blockage in one major artery … every time he twinges, I’m on high alert, because we’ve also been told that if he has worsening heart pain, to get him in. There’s a very real possibility he could experience a heart attack during this wait-time.”
The Garbutts aren’t the only Manitobans frustrated by these types of cancellations as healthcare facilities across the province struggle with staffing issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A spokesperson for Shared Health told Global News Saturday the move to cancel a number of non-emergency cardiac surgeries was made to ensure there were enough employees to cover intensive care beds over the weekend.
“This change was made to ensure appropriate ICU capacity across the system leading into the weekend, as ongoing patient-flow issues and staffing challenges in some areas have been exacerbated by patient demands,” the spokesperson said.
“Some cardiac ICU capacity has therefore been temporarily designated to provide care to non-cardiac patients in need of critical care services.”
An announcement on the province’s promised plans for the backlog is expected Wednesday.
Doctors Manitoba said its statistics show that there have been 208 fewer cardiac surgeries throughout the pandemic than there would be under normal circumstances.
“Physicians continue to be very concerned, especially as we see cardiac surgeries cancelled due to the strain on our healthcare system from the fourth wave,” said Dr. Kristjan Thompson, the organization’s president.
“Making these patients wait and delaying their definitive care suggests that our health system is again at a tipping point.”
Those cases are part of a total estimated pandemic backlog of more than 150,000 cases — from surgeries to diagnostic procedures, Doctors Manitoba said.
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