Woman's right leg amputated after waiting 8 days for bed at Winnipeg's HSC to treat open wound

A Manitoba woman had her right leg amputated after complications following a knee replacement surgery two months earlier.

Roseanne Milburn, 61, went ahead with the scheduled amputation last Friday, after weeks of complications stemming from a post-surgery infection.

In late November, a surgeon at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre began removing dead tissue from her right knee, with the intention of stitching her up later that day after she was seen by an orthopedic surgeon at Concordia Hospital.

She was sent to Concordia, but couldn't be transferred back to HSC because there wasn't a bed available for the specialist to finish the procedure. Instead, she spent eight days languishing at Concordia with a painful open wound.

Once she finally got to HSC, Milburn went under the knife for another infection, but due to the long delay in stitching up the wound, she said she was told her leg wasn't salvageable.

Shared Health, the entity that oversees health-care delivery in Manitoba, said last week it was up to Milburn to choose her preferred treatment option, but she stressed in interviews with CBC News the other choice, involving multiple surgeries and the chance her leg would still be amputated, didn't make sense.

"Nope, don't regret it," she said Monday of choosing the amputation.

"Don't like it because it's very painful," she added, describing the phantom limb pain she's feeling in the place where her leg used to be. 

Milburn said the operation went well, but she remains frustrated the six years she's waited for a knee replacement surgery has ended with an amputation.

"Discouraged. Don't know if I'm going to be home for Christmas," she said from her hospital bed at Concordia, the hospital where the amputation took place.

"Still living this hell day-by-day, hour-by-hour, not knowing anything."

Within a day of the operation, she was looking for ways to do things on her own.

Using walker with one leg

She didn't like relying on others to take her to the washroom so she asked how to use a walker, despite only having one leg.

"They were surprised," Milburn said of medical staff, "but I said I need to be independent for me."

She longs for the ability to take care of herself and the people around her.

"I'm the matriarch of the family. I take care of the family and now it's really hard to have them take care of me," she said, as her voice was breaking.

"It's hard to accept because I'm the one that's supposed to be taking care of them."

She's planning to get a prosthetic leg but she must recover first. She expects to be in hospital rehabbing from her amputation until at least Christmas Day, maybe longer, she said.

Given the fallout of her right knee replacement surgery, Milburn has decided she won't get surgery on her other knee — a procedure she's also wanted for more than six years.

Her right knee surgery finally happened in October.

"Careful what you wish for," she said.