Today I received a letter from the hospital asking if I wanted to be
placed on the “short notice” wait list.
That means, apparently, that I could be called with minimal notice (I
elected 48 hours so I have time to organise care for my dogs). I am very
hopeful that this letter is a turning point which might mean I am closer to
surgery.
Being the Curious George that I am, I googled “short notice surgery
wait list”, and found an interesting list of documents from the various state health
areas on surgery wait lists in general.
The "Elective
Surgery Services Implementation Standard" from Queensland Health is 18
pages, and lays out the procedures for admitting a patient to a hospital
surgery wait list, including categorisation of the condition for which the
surgery is to be scheduled.
- Category 1: Admission within 30 days desirable for a condition that has the potential to deteriorate quickly to the point that it may become an emergency.
- Category 2: Admission within 90 days desirable for a condition causing some pain, dysfunction, or disability but which is not likely to deteriorate quickly or become an emergency.
- Category 3: Admission at some time in the future acceptable for a condition causing minimal or no pain, dysfunction or disability, which is unlikely to deteriorate quickly and which does not have the potential to become an emergency. Admission for Category 3 patients is desirable within 365 days.
I don’t know what category I was assigned, but I do know that as at
today it’s 169 days since my aneurysm was found and 108 days since I saw the neurosurgery
Registrar. So I’m past the suggested
scheduling dates for both Category 1 and Category 2, which, to my simple mind,
means the hospital – or at least, neurosurgery – does not consider an aneurysm
has “the potential to become an emergency”.
I find this particularly interesting. I think any aneurysm has the potential
to rupture, and I have read survivor stories from people whose aneurysms
ruptured at only 5mm. My main one is
just less than 10mm. I have previously
posted about the stats and potential consequences if a rupture occurs. For
example, “Ruptured brain aneurysms are
fatal in about 40% of cases. Of those who survive, about 66% suffer some
permanent neurological deficit.” I would think that would constitute an
emergency. Based on this, and what the neurosurgery Registrar told me about the
size of my main aneurysm and my age, I would therefore consider my aneurysm as
"a condition that has the potential to deteriorate quickly to the point that
it may become an emergency".
Perhaps the reason aneurysms are not generally treated as a priority
category has a lot to do with what I wrote about in my last
post, and also what the Registrar told me back in September – that they
still don’t know enough about these little things. Which in some ways makes it
worse, because it makes those of us on surgery wait lists into guinea pigs. The
researchers find out more about aneurysms by examining those whose aneurysms
rupture – they had to have got the statistics from somewhere. Sceptical? Absolutely. This little sucker is inside my
brain and no-one in the medical profession seems to think that’s urgent. Or is that just because I have
no private health cover? (Which is a con anyway, because a friend who had her
surgery under private cover still ended up forking out literally thousands for the whole caboodle from her
pre-op diagnosis to her post-op care.)
Or am I actually Category 1, but one of many caught up in a health
system that is desperately short of money because politicians, who no doubt
have full comprehensive top-of-the-range health cover, never see what happens
at the bottom of the wait lists? Perhaps I’d best get off that particular subject… for now.
My Christmas
pressie to you, Mr Neurosurgeon and Hospital. Being that it’s only days until Christmas, I’ll give you the
benefit of the doubt and forget about wait lists for a couple of weeks. Enjoy it while you can and I’ll see
you in 2014.
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