‘A very sad and depressed life right now’: Surgery backlogs and the impact they have

Surgery backlogs in Saskatchewan aren’t anything new, but the recent surge of COVID-19 cases in the province is stretching out long wait times to even longer lengths.

According to the most recent numbers made available by the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA), there was a total of 33,287 patients waiting for surgery as of June 30.

One of those patients is 43-year-old Steven Turnquist, who lives near Regina.

(Steven Turnquist/Submitted)

Turnquist has been dealing with pain in his hips for what he calls “a number of years.” It was significant enough that he had to leave his job as a truck driver.

He eventually was able to see a specialist in August of 2020. That’s when Turnquist got answers that he had been waiting a long time for.

“I saw a specialist where he looked at the the X-ray and he said, ‘You need a new hip. You have no hip joint,’ ” Turnquist said. “I was then told there was an idea that it would be somewhere between eight and 10 months where a surgery would be likely.”

That eight-to-10-month time frame then turned out to be much, much longer.

“My visit was one year ago, or 13 months ago, and now I am learning I am going to be waiting at least another year before I’m going to get another another hip,” Turnquist said.

The extended wait time has impacted his mental health to a point where he says he is losing hope.

“I live a very sad and depressed life right now because I don’t have very much mobility,” Turnquist said. “I obviously understand that we are far behind; there’s an awful lot of us that need a surgery. What’s got me cranked is I’m going to be waiting another year. It’s just a very frustrating situation.

“Today you find me fairly hopeless, frustrated, alone, scared — all of the above. (There’s) just a whole host of of emotions.”

Now that Turnquist can no longer work at the job he had done for eight years, he says there isn’t much he can do to get out of his own head.

“I wander out to the garage and tinker about for an hour here and there, but right now it’s just making sure that I can cook and keep my house somewhat liveable is what I aim for,” he said.

“I can’t manage the pain. I can’t stay focused. I can’t stay in the moment.”

According to data from from the Government of Saskatchewan, 6,535 people were waiting more than a year for a surgery as of June 30.

The SHA’s CEO, Scott Livingstone, said during Friday’s news conference that slowing down services in areas that are dealing with a larger number of cases is necessary to ensure an effective COVID response.

“More will be coming out in the days to come, but there will be in some cases 100 per cent slowdowns of certain services. For example, elective surgeries in some facilities might slow down at 100 per cent,” Livingstone said. “In other cases, it might be maintained at 90 to 100 per cent when they are not seeing the same type of COVID cases.

“We don’t want to impact individuals, but the reality is that it’s going to.”

The number of COVID patients in Saskatchewan hospitals stood Monday at 209; that figure was 111 just two weeks earlier.

The SHA said it would be cancelling a number of services due to rising COVID hospitalizations, and will be moving staff around to deal with the increase in COVID cases in the province.