'Heartbreaking situation' as patients face long waits for delayed surgeries

Three weeks ago, Blythe McKay started vomiting blood.

Days later, she ended up in hospital and was told she needed emergency surgery.

The operation, a treatment for her Crohn's disease, happened three days after she was scheduled for her first meeting with doctors to discuss when that surgery — initially deemed elective — would have taken place.

She considers herself lucky.

"If I'd waited longer, it could have gotten more urgent," she said. "If I just hadn't had some sudden worsening of the symptoms and just sort of gradually gotten worse, I probably would have lost my colon."

While McKay had her operation, there are still roughly 19,000 patients across the Champlain Local Health Integration Network — which encompasses an area from Deep River, Ont., to Cornwall, Ont. — awaiting various surgeries and procedures, a backlog caused by a rise in COVID-19 cases during the pandemic's third wave that overwhelmed the province's health-care system.

Most hospitals across Ontario were ordered to stop performing all but emergency and life-saving surgery in early April.

That directive was lifted last week.

"I feel very fortunate about how things turned out," said McKay, who had known for months surgery was looming.

"It's been extremely stressful ... I'm finally feeling like, OK, now I can start focusing on recovery, rather being in this sort of horrible limbo situation."

Clearing backlog will take 'many, many months'

That limbo is what Isabella Pileggi dreads. She began experiencing horrific pain last September, pain that causes her to double over multiple times a week, sometimes for hours.

Last winter, she was diagnosed with gallstones and will now have to have her gallbladder removed. She has no idea when that will happen.

"It's mixed emotions," she said. "You want the people with COVID to be taken care of, to get them healthy. You want the front-line workers to have a break because they've been going 24/7 for 15 months. But [my situation] is critical care."

At least I'd know there is an end in sight. And right now, there is no end in sight.- Isabella Pileggi

She also worries about having to take prescription morphine while waiting for her surgery, a drug she knows can be addictive.

Since the provincial directive was lifted, teams have been going through the backlog list and rescheduling surgeries based on priority, said Dr. Virginia Roth, chief of staff at The Ottawa Hospital (TOH).

But she warns that change won't be immediate.

"We will take many, many months, I think, to clear that backlog," she said.

Roth said hospitals are limited by staffing levels — TOH has redeployed 200 staff to work in COVID-19 areas like the ICU — and the number of in-patient beds available, which means they'll start with day surgeries.

"It is really a heartbreaking situation," she said, acknowledging the thousands of patients facing unknown waits. "Many of them are also dealing with pain, loss of function. It has a huge impact on people's lives."

A lack of hope

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, TOH and the Queensway Carleton Hospital performed around 65,000 surgeries and procedures a year, combined.

That dropped to just shy of 51,000 the past fiscal year.

The Ford government also allocated an extra $1.8 billion in the latest provincial budget to help hospitals care for COVID-19 patients and take care of the backlog of surgeries.

For Pileggi, beyond the pain she struggles with, she wants hope — and that would come in the form of a date for her surgery.

"At least I'd know there is an end in sight. And right now, there is no end in sight."