A B.C. senior has been left feeling devastated and defeated after a long-sought hip replacement was cancelled at the last minute, and she was told she may need another half a year.
“I want to say the system sucks — it’s not a nice word, but it’s not fair to treat human beings like that,” Shirley Colwell told Global News.
“To put them on such a long wait list in pain and waiting and anticipating, and then finally they pull the rug out from under you.”
Colwell, a Burnaby resident, has been on a surgery waitlist for five years, and had to overcome numerous obstacles to get healthy enough for her surgery.
She was finally booked in for Jan. 17, had the surgery confirmed again the day prior, and showed up as scheduled at Vancouver General Hospital.
Everything was going according to plan through all the pre-operation protocol, right down to changing into a gown and having her hip marked with a pen for surgery.
But at the last minute, a doctor came in and said he needed to make sure there was a bed available for her afterward, according to Brenda Rosston, a friend who accompanied Colwell to the hospital.
“And then he came back and said, ‘I’m sorry,'” Rosston said.
“Shirley is such an independent person it’s hard for her to ask for help … It was just very sad to spend the entire day from 11:30 to 4 watching her get ready for surgery, and then having it cancelled at the last second.”
Colwell told Global News the cancellation would mean she now needs to wait between four and six months to be re-booked.
The conversation, she said, was a major blow.
“I just broke into tears, I was heartbroken,” she said.”
“You know you’re on such a high, you’re scared, you are going surgery, there’s anticipation … you get this feeling of euphoria, this is really going to happen. And then you get the (wind) knocked out of you, you’re not going. I was devastated.”
Colwell, who turns 80 this spring, said she doesn’t know how she’ll deal with months of pain that she described as debilitating.
Her adult children are not around to help her, and she said she prefers to do things on her own anyway.
But the chronic pain in her hip means she’s reliant on a walker to get around, and feels cut off and alone.
“It’s very tiring and depressing and sad. I feel I’m not part of the world, I can’t participate because of the pain and the disability,” she said.
“My son lives in Toronto and my daughter lives in Cranbrook and when I get this done I can finally go and visit them. Or go out with my friends and go for walks and stuff. Right now I have to take a walker and sit down every few steps because the pain is so bad.”
In a statement, Vancouver Coastal Health said it understood the stress of a cancelled surgery and that it works to reschedule all cancelled procedures as quickly as possible.
“The surgery previous to the one in question overran it’s time, which caused a postponement. This postponement was not due to staff shortage,” the health authority said.
“It is important for patients to know that emergency and urgent surgeries are continuing as normal.”
Earlier this week, the provincial government said it was making progress moving through a backlog of surgeries, but acknowledged some procedures were still being cancelled.
Between Jan. 1 and Jan. 7, 190 surgeries were cancelled across the province, mostly due to staff shortages, according to officials.
The week before Christmas, health authorities completed nearly 4,700 surgeries across the province. The week before that almost 7,500 surgeries were completed.
”We are completing more surgeries at any week than at any time in the history of the health care system in British Columbia,” said B.C. health minister Adrian Dix.
In the meantime, Colwell is focused on staying healthy and waiting to hear about when her surgery will actually take place.
“I had such faith that this would be all over with and I could start to live again without pain,” she said.
“Instead my doctor told me it will be another four to six month wait. What do I do Mr. Dix?”