A patient at Waikato Hospital says he has waited more than a month for cardiac surgery – and has been told to expect at least another three-week wait.<\/p>\n
Norm Davies suffered a heart attack five weeks ago and was rushed to Thames Hospital via ambulance and then onto Waikato Hospital.<\/p>\n
The 71-year-old said he was admitted to hospital relatively quickly through the emergency department where doctors initially considered his case severe.<\/p>\n
Davies, who has taken sick leave from his job, said tests to determine his condition were done speedily.<\/p>\n
They revealed one artery was 90 percent blocked while two were 70 percent blocked, and he needed a triple bypass.<\/p>\n
But exactly when the Coromandel man will get the surgery is uncertain.<\/p>\n
“I mentioned to one of the doctors that they said it would be two weeks and he said ‘you’d be lucky to get it done in six’.<\/p>\n
“Obviously there’s priorities. I think most of it comes back to the lack of space in intensive care.”<\/p>\n
Davies, who spoke to RNZ from his hospital bed, said doctors told him he would need at least a day of recovery in the intensive care unit before he transferred to a cardiac care ward.<\/p>\n
He expected to be in hospital for at least one week post-surgery.<\/p>\n
Davies worried he had another four-week wait ahead of him based on the wait time of two other patients he had come to know while sharing a room.<\/p>\n
He claimed they waited 63 days, with one of the patients being bumped at the last minute.<\/p>\n
Davies said he was so exhausted by a lack of sleep due to constant disruption that he threatened to leave.<\/p>\n
“I said ‘I’ve had enough. I’ve hit a wall, and I just wanna go home’. Anyway they’ve moved me to a quieter room and I’m only sharing that with one other person.”<\/p>\n
He was told if he discharged himself, he would go to the bottom of the waiting list if he had another heart attack that was non-life-threatening.<\/p>\n
Despite the situation, Davies praised hospital staff for their care saying the delays were out of their control.<\/p>\n
“They’re understaffed. You know the nurses are doing a fantastic job with the amount of people they’re trying to look after.”<\/p>\n
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A patient at Waikato Hospital says he has waited more than a month for cardiac surgery – and has been told to expect at least another three-week wait. Norm Davies suffered a heart attack five weeks ago and was rushed to Thames Hospital via ambulance and then onto Waikato Hospital. The 71-year-old said he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11228,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11226\/revisions\/11228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}