The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Patient’s fears after coronavirus results in operation cancellation.
Patient in agonising pain with gall bladder but surgery postponed until September
A Tayport woman has claimed her health is “in danger” because anti-coronavirus measures mean she is unable to have her gall bladder removed.
Linda Mckenna, 55, described the agonising pain she has suffered after her case led to Holyrood calls for the resumption of operations, which have been cancelled to free up NHS capacity during the pandemic.
On Friday Ms Mckenna was discharged from Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, without having surgery, despite doctors saying her gall bladder needs to be taken out.
During a hospital stay of several days Ms Mckenna was told that she could not be operated on unless she was classed as an urgent case.
“They told me I needed an operation but they weren’t allowed to operate until September unless it was an emergency,” Ms Mckenna said.
“That shocked me because there were other people in the hospital who were suffering too.”
In desperation, Ms Mckenna wrote to her local MSP, Lib Dem Willie Rennie, from her hospital bed. “It was the doctors who said: ‘Write to your MSP, because our hands are tied.’”
She said she feared her case could be affected by the logjam of operations.
“There is going to be backlog and I’m more scared that this is going to have to wait until I’m in a bad state again and that, to me, is putting my health in danger,” she said.
An increase in Scottish deaths, which cannot be explained by the Covid-19 virus, have sparked fears that anticoronavirus measures could have a negative impact on people suffering from other illnesses.
Mr Rennie took Ms Mckenna’s case up with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, claiming there was hospital capacity for operations to be performed now.
Ms Sturgeon said she sympathised with Ms Mckenna but she said the people of Scotland understood why operations had to be postponed during the crisis and added that plans were being made to restart them.
“We had to make judgments about the risk to patients and whether that risk would have been greater, taking them into hospital, bringing them into contact with people, perhaps exposing them to the virus,” the first minister said.
“We are intensively planning how we, in an orderly way, resume those NHS procedures. That will be work that accelerates over the next few weeks.”
A spokeswoman for NHS Tayside said: “As is the case in all health boards across Scotland, clinical teams are currently working on remobilisation plans to identify how we can safely increase operations and procedures.”