Pushed out by Covid care
Luke Burke expected to be recovering from life-saving stomach surgery by now. Instead, he spent lockdown enduring chemotherapy he was originally told he wouldn’t need.
Burke, 25, of Wellington, said he was told by doctors he had stomach cancer and would go straight into surgery in March, with a three-month recovery window.
But, as the coronavirus outbreak worsened, he said doctors at Wellington Regional Hospital told him his recovery bed was now needed to prepare for a surge in Covid-19 patients. ‘‘Because they wanted to keep the ICU clear for Covid-19 they said they weren’t doing the surgery,’’ he said.
The doctors didn’t want to leave Burke with stomach cancer, so he underwent eight weeks of chemotherapy.
‘‘I wouldn’t have needed to have chemo if it wasn’t for Covid,’’ he said.
He finished chemotherapy two weeks ago and now fears he may never be able to be a father.
The effect the chemotherapy has had on his life has him asking questions.
‘‘For me and my partner, the biggest question is ‘why didn’t it get referred to a private hospital?’.’’
Burke is one of thousands of patients who have had ‘‘non-urgent’’ operations cancelled during the eightweek lockdown to clear beds for a surge in Covid-19 patients that didn’t eventuate.
Private hospital leaders said they were expecting to do more elective surgeries, including cancer operations, to help district health boards catch up. Senior doctors have warned it will take years to clear the surgical backlog.
For Burke, stomach cancer was
always a risk, because of a rare inherited genetic mutation.
Burke’s grandfather died of stomach cancer, and he, his mother, and cousin carry the gene that gives them a 70 per cent chance of developing the disease.
Once Burke gets his stomach removed, he will have another round of chemotherapy, which means he could be off work for six months.
His family are raising money on a Givealittle page to support him while he can’t work.
‘‘If I got the surgery when I was supposed to, I would be recovered by now,’’ he said.
He had an appointment with a surgeon yesterday to decide the next steps, but the surgery will be weeks away.
‘‘You need four weeks [after chemotherapy] for the body to recover.’’
Having chemotherapy over lockdown and away from his family in Nelson was also difficult, he said.
‘‘It worried them most because they are so far away that they won’t be able to travel if anything happened.’’
Capital and Coast District Health Board director of provider services Joy Farley said she was unable to comment on individual cases, but the hospital had to be pragmatic when responding to the anticipated Covid-19 burden on ICU beds.
‘‘Like other DHBs, we faced challenges with how best to maintain good patient outcomes while maintaining a state of readiness to respond to Covid-19,’’ she said.
‘‘The burden on ICU beds was an internationally known pressure point in healthcare and, as a result, we had to be pragmatic at times when planning surgery for cancer patients to ensure we could continue to provide effective management until a time that surgery could continue as usual.’’
Chemotherapy and radiation was standard for different types of cancers, and not unusual before a surgery.
‘‘Any impact from chemotherapy upon a person’s long-term health would be anticipated and explained whether surgery was provided prior, or subsequent, to chemotherapy,’’ she added.