DELAYS ON SURGERY A DARK TIME
A WOMAN left unable to walk and waiting months for a double hip replacement says she planned her own suicide as hospital staff claimed her case “wasn’t serious enough”.
Mudgeeraba woman Patricia Clayton claimed her surgery has been postponed and cancelled multiple times despite her being confined to a wheelchair and unable to bathe herself properly.
The 57-year-old former community support worker was forced to quit her job when her hip problems left her unable to walk. She said her husband was forced to retire to become her carer.
Her saga is the latest in a series of heartbreaking stories shared by the Bulletin, uncovering a health system in crisis, with patients waiting for almost two years before their first appointment.
“I’m in a wheelchair at the appointment (at the hospital), I’m telling him I can’t walk, he doesn’t believe me. They’re telling me at the emergency department when I went in six times, ‘don’t come back until you’re paralysed’.”
She said she had been waiting one year and 155 days for surgery.
Her husband has been forced to carry her upstairs “once a fortnight” to shower in their upstairs bathroom.
“It seems no one wants to help me. Some days I was sitting there planning how to die.
“I can’t go to emergency because they don’t want me there. They just let me lie there in a chair in the hall.”
A Gold Coast Health spokeswoman said they could not comment on individual patients.
“We appreciate that it is painful for patients waiting for hip replacement surgery,” she said.
“We recommend that patients see their GP regularly so if their condition worsens, they can be re-referred
to be considered as a more urgent category.
“The average waiting time for orthopaedic surgery was 66 days.”
She added three patients were on the “long-wait” list as of March.
Mudgeeraba MP and Shadow Health Minister Ros Bates accused the state government of “losing control” of the health system.
The state government fired back at a continued onslaught by the LNP this week in Parliament, with Health Minister Yvette D’Ath repeatedly claiming the crisis is a “national issue”.