The sacrifice Canadians have collectively made to flatten the coronavirus curve also includes immeasurable suffering from postponed surgeries, says a B.C. man who lost his mother not to the virus but to cancer.
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The sacrifice Canadians have collectively made to flatten the coronavirus curve also includes immeasurable suffering from postponed surgeries, says a B.C. man who lost his mother not to the virus but to cancer.
Min Hua (Jasmine) Yang, 60, started having abdominal pain, fever and then breathing difficulties in January. She went to an emergency department in Surrey, B.C., and was diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer in March.
Her son, Jonathan Hu, 31, said oncologists recommended surgery in early April as the best treatment for Yang’s three, late-stage tumours. But the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown included postponing or cancelling non-emergency surgeries like Yang’s — and an estimated 394,575 others across Canada.
“There is a lot more people who are suffering or dying other than just a number of deaths that you see from the coronavirus,” Hu said.
Canada’s health-care systems made a choice to cancel surgeries and to devote hospital staff and resources to COVID-19.
“We were really frustrated,” Hu said.
The family “felt powerless” as they watched Yang deteriorate daily during chemotherapy that was not part of the original treatment plan for her sex cord stromal cancer. The surgery was postponed weeks to May 4.
Yang died two days earlier.
“The choice that we made has consequences and we’re living with those consequences right now,” Hu said.
Tough choices
Dr. Iris Gorfinkel, a family physician in Toronto, worries about unintended consequences from those choices for her patients, too.
For example, virtual care excludes the physical exams she performs to quantify the degree of pain a patient has.
WATCH | The complications of resuming surgeries during pandemic:
Many provinces are starting to resume non-emergency surgeries delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s a complicated balance of trying to clear the backlogs and keeping patients safe. 2:03
“You put your hand on that person’s belly you see immediately they’re not doing well because you can feel how they’re reacting,” Gorfinkel said. “I know from my own practice I’m more likely to order tests because of that uncertainty, which is another cost to the system because I don’t want to be wrong.”
Patients are also left wondering whether delays in tests and procedures made a difference in their care, Gorfinkel said.
It’s one reason why health-care professionals across the country are preparing to do more procedures and surgeries.
Surgery backlog mounts
In May, B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix estimated it could take up to two years to clear the backlog of 30,000 patients whose surgeries were postponed or not scheduled since mid-March in that province alone due to COVID-19.
In Quebec, Dr. Gilbert Boucher, head of the province’s association of emergency medicine specialists, said the flow of patients sick with medical conditions besides COVID-19 has resumed in much of the province.
The last three weeks, however, have included struggles with finding space, inclu