A Winnipeg man who has waited nearly six years for back surgery has decided he can wait no longer and plans to have it done in Germany.
Shane Komar said a 2018 CT scan confirmed the need for surgery and he has been in ever-increasing pain since, but somehow still does not have a date for the procedure.
“If I don’t take muscle relaxants and (pain) medication, my back pain is as high as it can be,” he said Tuesday. “But even then, if I stay in bed my back pain is a five (out of 10). When I get up it is an eight and if I stand for 30 seconds my legs go numb or feel like they are on fire.”
Ruth Bonneville / Free Press
Now mostly bedridden by increasing discomfort, Shane Komar sits stiffly on his couch, tears welling up as he describes the pain and frustration of waiting for back surgery since 2018.
Komar, 51, said the pain has prevented him from working for the last two years and he has liquidated his savings and retirement funds.
Previously employed in sales for an optical company, he is now mostly bedridden to reduce his discomfort.
“This is not a life to live,” he said.
Doctors haven’t been able to tell him the source of his injury. He said the CT scan revealed the need to have two vertebrae fused and three discs replaced. He said he has had at least three MRIs since, each showing his back is “worse and worse.”
“The only way I can be pain free is through surgery,” he said. “I can’t wait for Manitoba Health — I need to get my life back. I have a wife, two girls, one in university and one in school. I need to get back to work.”
Komar said he has been repeatedly told that he is on his surgeon’s list, but the office cannot give him a date.
He saw the doctor once and was told “there are people ahead of you.”
In a statement, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said “this is a heartbreaking situation that no one deserves to go through” and blamed the previous Progressive Conservative government for its health cuts.
Asagwara said the province has a new spinal-care program it expects will reduce surgical wait times.
The minister said their office has contacted the family and is “working to ensure that they are connected with the appropriate care providers.”
Shared Health will review the case, “including his timeline for surgery,” a spokesperson said.
The new spinal care program has resulted in a 50 per cent increase in surgical capacity, which will reduce the waiting list in the months ahead, the spokesperson said.
Patients needing spinal surgery are triaged based on need and a new surgical wait-list information management system will allow surgical teams to get “a more accurate and robust picture of how long specific patients have been waiting, allowing for better informed decisions,” the spokesperson said.
Max Johnson, a former travel agency owner who skipped the years-long waiting list to pay to have his knee replaced in Lithuania in 2021, said Komar’s situation shows nothing has changed in the years since.
“It’s exactly the same argument I had,” said Johnson. “It doesn’t get any better. You just wait months and months and you just feel the entire health system is just a black hole.
“If you’re given a date… you can deal with that, but to get nothing is a different matter… I have endless sympathy for him because his situation is so terrible.”
Komar said a crowd-sourced fundraiser, along with family and friends, are helping cover his $60,000 out-of-country surgery costs, but he’s hoping something will change and he can have the procedure here.
“If I knew I could get surgery in a year, I would wait a year, but they just can’t say when it will be. But if I get the surgery (here) I will gladly give everyone their money back.”
kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Kevin Rollason
Reporter
Kevin Rollason is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He graduated from Western University with a Masters of Journalism in 1985 and worked at the Winnipeg Sun until 1988, when he joined the Free Press. He has served as the Free Press’s city hall and law courts reporter and has won several awards, including a National Newspaper Award. Read more about Kevin.
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