Woman with multiple broken ribs has waited 6 days for surgery at Moncton hospital
Surgery can't proceed till ICU bed becomes available at hospital grappling with COVID outbreaks in 4 units
It happened in the blink of an eye. Linda Cummings, 74, stepped out onto the front porch of her Hampton home to get a breath of fresh air. She slipped and fell on the frost-slicked steps, breaking four ribs and cracking four others.
She was sent to Saint John Regional Hospital and diagnosed with a "flail chest," a serious injury that left her chest wall destabilized and floating, and transferred to the Moncton Hospital for thoracic surgery.
Six days later, Cummings is still awaiting surgery and an available ICU bed at the crowded, short-staffed Moncton hospital, where COVID-19 outbreaks have been declared in four units and 27 patients have tested positive for the virus as of Friday.
Cummings has been on a hydromorphone drip to manage the pain of the broken ribs as she awaits surgery.
But her son, Brian Cummings, is growing increasingly alarmed as each day comes and goes without a bed opening up for his mother.
"She's in a lot of pain, she's having a lot of trouble breathing," he said in an interview Friday. "It's so frustrating to be sitting here waiting … knowing full well that there may be no end in sight here."
Cummings, a police officer in Miramichi, has been coming to the hospital daily to be with his mother, hoping every day to hear that her surgery can proceed.
On Friday morning, he asked the assistant surgeon what was the longest time he'd ever seen a flail chest patient wait before getting surgery.
"He said 'two days,' " Cummings said. "Well, we're on day six."
Cummings said the surgeon has also told him that "there's a window" within which the surgery should be done. If that window is missed, the ribs will start to try to heal and "connect themselves to the muscle tissue," leaving the patient in chronic pain.
"And in [the surgeon's] words, we're at that window right now."
Hospital is 'managing well,' minister says
Horizon Health Network said Friday that as of midnight Thursday night, there were just three of 23 ICU beds available at the Moncton Hospital.
Communications advisor Kris McDavid said he did not have the current occupancy rate for the COVID unit, which has 36 beds, but said that as of late Friday afternoon, 27 patients and six staff had tested positive for the virus.
He noted that 16 of 43 ICU beds at Saint John Regional Hospital are occupied. However, that hospital is not a good option for Cummings because of the type of surgery she requires.
Earlier Friday, Health Minister Dorothy Shephard told reporters that the hospital is handling the outbreaks well.
"We have 23 patients and five staff members who have tested positive for COVID," Shephard said during a scrum at the legislature.
"The hospital is managing well right now."
Shephard noted the hospital is doing "sentinel testing," proactively testing non-symptomatic individuals throughout the hospital "to ensure that they try to catch anything if it has spread."
"But there's no indication of that right now," Shephard said.
Cummings himself stressed that he places no blame on the hospital's handling of the outbreaks or on hospital staff, noting they have all, without exception, been "top notch."
But he does have a message for those who have chosen to remain unvaccinated.
"If one bed in the ICU right now is being taken up by somebody who is in intensive care because they have COVID and they refuse to get vaccinated, that's a bed that my mother could have been in," Cummings said.
"The individuals in this province who have chosen to take the stance to not get vaccinated and are anti-vaxxers, I don't know how more blunt I can say this. … They are fools, and they are putting a huge tax on our health-care system."
Cummings said he hopes to hear by tonight or Saturday that his mother will be getting the surgery she needs.
But he said he worries about the other New Brunswick patients who are in the same predicament, waiting for an available ICU bed so that they can have surgery.
He's urging Premier Blaine Higgs and Public Health officials to do something about the outbreaks that are putting a strain on hospitals.
"Bring in harsher penalties, bring in more guidelines and more restrictions and more circuit breakers," he said.
"Something needs to be done. This is not acceptable."
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