After waiting six years for a double knee replacement, a Manitoba woman has decided to move away from the province and seek care for her excruciating pain elsewhere.
A for sale sign has gone up outside Dan and Roseanne Milburn’s home in Elie, with the couple set to try their luck in Alberta.
“This shouldn’t be my life in my 50s and my 60s, I’m living like a 90-year-old,” Milburn said Tuesday afternoon.
The 60-year-old was forced to retire in 2021 and relies on walkers, canes and crutches to move around. She can no longer drive and stress and constant pain have caused permanent hair loss.
The couple has no home or doctor lined up in Alberta, but say they have no other choice — the pain the mother of three constantly experiences has taken a toll on her mental health and she has considered suicide.
“I grew up here, all my family’s here. My parents need my help, but my wife needs to live,” Dan Milburn said.
The couple have been told anecdotally wait times in Alberta don’t exceed two years. For them, the risk is worth it.
“I go from my bed to my chair, back to my bed,” Roseanne Milburn said, getting emotional. “I don’t know what else to do, we’ve done everything we can.”
In January, Milburn told the Free Press her family doctor made multiple surgery referrals for her, including one to the Boundary Trails Hospital in the Winkler-Morden area last year in hopes of getting her on a wait list.
In March 2023, her doctor estimated she’d see a surgeon in July and get one knee replaced the following January; those dates came and went without a word. In February, Milburn saw a surgeon who promised she’d have an appointment for the procedure in June or July.
Those dates passed, too.
“My doctor has been trying to get me in somewhere, and every time he does I go to the bottom of the pile, and I start to wait all over again,” Milburn said. “Everyone is just passing me around.”
Even if she received a letter in the next week with a surgery appointment in Manitoba, Milburn wouldn’t take it because she’s lost faith in the health-care system.
“It’s gotten worse, not better,” Dan Milburn said of the NDP’s handling of health care.
The province announced in November it would shut down its Diagnostic and Surgical Recovery Task Force, which provided some patients with the option of getting certain surgeries quicker out of province and shaved months off wait times in Manitoba.
Gutting the task force would help to redirect funding toward other health-care projects and develop long-term capacity for the province’s surgical needs, the NDP government said at the time.
A spokesperson for Shared Health said the amount of time patients wait for hip or knee surgery in Manitoba can vary, depending on the patient’s specific needs. Patients needing procedures are triaged and prioritized based on need, and those with more significant health needs often receive surgery sooner.
“While recent efforts to perform more joint replacement surgeries have been met with success, demand for these procedures continues to increase, due in part to an aging population,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
“While recent efforts to perform more joint replacement surgeries have been met with success, demand for these procedures continues to increase, due in part to an aging population.”– Shared Health spokesperson in an emailed statement
As of May, the median wait time for orthopedic knee replacement surgery in Manitoba was 34 weeks, up from 26 weeks in 2023, according to the province’s diagnostic and surgical wait list dashboard.
About 1,291 patients are waiting for knee replacement surgery, the dashboard says. About 1,600 of those procedures were completed between January and May.
Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said the dashboard doesn’t accurately reflect past wait times and accused the previous Progressive Conservative government of dragging their heels on getting surgical candidates onto wait lists.
The minister defended the province’s cancellation of the task force, calling it inefficient.
“The task force operated in its own silo, (it) wasn’t talking to sites across the province, it wasn’t working in collaboration, which meant that many Manitobans had no idea what the pathways were to get care, get connected to a specialist, or how they could get clarity on what their wait times even were,” Asagwara said.
The Shared Health spokesperson said recent money directed to the Grace and Concordia hospitals will make room for more orthopedic surgeries and an ongoing recruitment of surgeons will help to tackle wait times.
Asagwara hinted at a future announcement regarding access to local surgical care in the province, but stopped short of divulging any details.
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a multimedia producer who reports for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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