Still Waiting
A letter about lockdowns and canceled surgeries was submitted by wntta reader and friend, Kara-Lynn Garland.
Hey there,
I get it. I know you’re tired, I’m tired too, and frankly so is my dad.
The difference is, you and I are tired of the newsreels, capacity limits, lockdowns, masking, testing lineups, missing our friends, and our routines.
My dad is tired because he has cancer.
He has Clear Cell Carcinoma, a type of cancer that has virtually no symptoms with the exception of fatigue that is sometimes accompanied by a nagging pain in the back.
Flashback to September 2019, my dad is in for routine tests (he’s part of a double-blind medical study on kidney cancer and surgical methods). We’re grateful he’s getting followed so closely post-surgery. His cancer has been in remission since 2016. A few weeks later we get the news, a cyst on his kidney looks to be growing a structure inside, but it’s very small and too soon to see what it is. The Oncological Urologist at the Ottawa hospital says, “It could be benign. Let’s get you booked in for a follow-up in 6 months.”
Six months go by. Now it’s March 2020.
Yep, that March.
My dad is able to get blood work, but his CT scan is delayed, indefinitely. In May he gets a call, he’s getting a scan, the medical images show the cancer has grown. There’s no mistaking what it is. We all take a deep breath. We’ve been here before… but not in a pandemic. Surgeries are still on hold in Ontario, and they’ll have the nurse call to book another scan in 6 months, hopefully in the fall things will calm down. How naive we all were.
A few days later Dad gets a call, “we’ve booked for a CT scan in 2 years”.
A cancer patient is going to have to wait 2 years for a routine medical imaging test.
My dad is one of the lucky ones. He got a call in October 2020, a spot opened up for a CT scan an hour and a half outside of Ottawa in a rural hospital. “Thank goodness”. I think to myself, “Things are starting to get moving!”
A few weeks later he finds out the cancer has grown but it’s still less than 2 centimeters, we’re in decent shape. The hospital will call with a surgery date as soon as one becomes available.
That call still hasn’t come.
“He’s one of the lucky ones”, I keep trying to remind myself. “His cancer is slow-growing, we have time.” The reality is my dad is 6 years older now, he’s got a whole lotta scar tissue and half a kidney. In your 70’s waiting longer for surgery could result in you being “unfit for surgical procedures”. And he’s been waiting 15 months. This should be obvious, but cancer treatments really need to be timely.
You might say “he’s not my dad”, you might say “he’s 75, he had a good run”. But the thing is, he’s not the only one waiting.
Ontario health doesn’t keep records on canceled or delayed surgeries. However, comparison data shows that from March 15, 2020, to May 2, 2021, there were 232,574 fewer surgeries carried out overall than during the same period pre-pandemic and there were 6,225 fewer adult oncology surgeries, of which my dad is one. To you, I ask, what if it were your dad? Your mom? Your partner? Your child?
The Ford government has given up controlling the spread of Omicron. They snuck through an announcement late afternoon on New Year's eve to tell schools and daycares to stop reporting case numbers. Now, contact tracing is essentially impossible. Our government has accepted the fact that our hospitals will soon be overrun once again, and are doing practically nothing to flatten the curve.
When we know better, we should be able to do better, right? A pandemic isn't over just because our government wishes it to be, a pandemic is over when the virus stops circulating. Ontarians deserve better than a governmental public health strategy built on virtual inaction and half measures at best. Enough is enough. While ineffectively trying to manage one crisis, they’ve created another heartbreaking one.
So where do we go from here?
The philosopher T.M. Scanlon wrote in his book, What We Owe to Each Other; “The real answer is in our relationships – what we can learn from each other, what we can do for each other and what we owe to each other.”
If you can stay home, stay home.
If you can wear a mask, wear one.
If you can get a vaccine, get one.
If you have access to a booster, make that appointment.
If you can donate PPE to your neighbors in need, do it.
This sh*t only works if we are all in it together.
Then when the time comes to vote, VOTE! Vote like the lives of your loved ones depends on it, because they just might.
The consequences of our collective actions could very much mean life or death for any of the 200,000+ patients waiting for surgeries in Ontario.
It could be the difference between life or death for my dad.
Resources- https://globalnews.ca/news/8169188/cancer-care-delays-survey/
CBC news- 'Cancer care needs to be timely'
“Ontario Health, the Crown agency created in 2019 to co-ordinate the province's health-care system, said it could not provide the specific number of surgeries delayed due to the pandemic. But it did share comparative data on surgeries completed before COVID-19 struck and in the months that followed.
From March 15, 2020, to May 2, 2021, there were 232,574 fewer surgeries carried out overall than during the same period pre-pandemic. There were 6,225 fewer adult oncology surgeries.
From Jan. 1, 2021, to April 30, there were 42,052 fewer surgeries completed than during the same period in 2019.
There have been 16,148 adult oncology surgeries performed from January to the end of April this year despite the pressures of the third wave, but that's still 525 fewer cancer surgeries than in the same timeframe pre-pandemic.”