Norfolk woman endures six-day wait for surgery on broken leg

A Simcoe-area woman is finally home after enduring a six-day ordeal in two hospitals.

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Meghan Proctor broke her leg after colliding with another player in a women’s soccer league game on Monday, June 17.

The 39-year-old mother of two was taken by ambulance to Norfolk General Hospital’s emergency department where a temporary cast was put in place, and painkillers administered.

Her husband Jeremy was told his wife would be transferred to Brantford General Hospital for surgery the next morning.

Meghan wasn’t moved as planned because there was no room for her at BGH.

“So, I asked, are there no other hospitals in Ontario?” said her husband in a Facebook post he wrote out of frustration on June 20, which was shared more than 900 times. “Laying there in bed for five days with a broken leg just trying to get surgery to get fixed up. I’m fed up!”

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He wrote about hearing “probably 30 or 40 people… screaming and waiting for surgeries” as he wandered the third-floor halls of the Simcoe hospital.

Jeremy admits he had a bit of a “freak out” on Thursday (June 20), questioning why his wife couldn’t be sent to a hospital in London, Kitchener, Hamilton, or Toronto. He said he was told it would be “too much paperwork” and she would get into Brantford sooner than anywhere else.

“It’s a broken system,” Jeremy exclaimed. “It’s not easy to watch your wife lie there in pain and agony. On top of that I’ve got two kids and a construction business at home to try to take care of. She should have been home four days ago.”

Meaghan was moved to BGH on Friday and underwent surgery at 6:15 pm Saturday.

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The two-and-a-half-hour procedure saw a rod installed from her knee to ankle, with a plate and nine screws.

In an email response to questions from Postmedia, Dr. Sydney Godzisz, chief, Department of Surgery, and Dr. Susan O’Leary, chief, Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine at BGH, said factors that contribute to delays for non-elective surgeries include the high number of patients; increasing complexity of patients resulting in increasing complexity of surgery and care; higher priority cases; access to an available bed, and funding.

“It is important to recognize that BCHS has seen a significant increase in non-elective surgery demands,” they stated. “We are doing procedures that are more difficult and take a longer time.”

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The doctors said that surgical programs in hospitals must work within their budget allocations, adding that BCHS is recruiting for gaps in health human resources to improve wait times for patients.

“The vast majority of patients treated at BCHS are from our local community, Brantford-Brant, Six Nations of the Grand River, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and the immediate surrounding area (approximately 150,000 people) and those within the Haldimand Norfolk area ,” the doctors said. “Not all Ontario hospitals are funded to provide all surgical services. BCHS is designated as the referral hospital for the NGH regarding orthopedics and generally surgery.”

Aaron Gautreau, director of communications at NGH, said the hospital works closely with regional partners to ensure patients have access to the care they need, when they need it.

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“Like many hospitals across the province, we’re facing challenges with surgical backlogs and are actively working to strengthen our team to better serve everyone,” he noted.

In September 2021 NGH had to suspend obstetrical care for 14 months due to a staffing shortage, with expectant parents having to travel to Brantford for care. The hospital’s talent acquisition team conducted an intensive recruitment drive to assemble a skilled team that now provides prenatal care.

“I think what happened to Jeremy and his wife Meg is absolutely disgusting in the province of Ontario,” said Haldimand-Norfolk MPP Bobbi Ann Brady. “That’s no reflection on the hospitals she was in. Those healthcare workers are stretched beyond belief and it’s an example of what our healthcare system in Ontario currently looks like.”

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Brady questioned Ontario Minister of Health Sylvia Jones in the Legislature earlier in June, asking “why Ontario’s healthcare system is in such disrepair, and I was basically told it’s not.

“That’s not true,” said Brady. “As sad as this example is, it’s happening all over Ontario.”

In response to questions e-mailed by Postmedia to Jones, Minister of Health spokesperson Hannah Jensen said “our government recognizes that Ontarians are spending too much time trying to navigate the healthcare system and waiting too long, or travelling too far, to access the care and support they need. Our government is not okay with that status quo.”

Jensen said the Ford government has increased the healthcare budget by more than 31 per cent since 2018, investing $85 billion into the system this year.

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“We have added over 80,000 new nurses and 12,500 new physicians to the healthcare workforce,” the spokesperson said. “To continue to reduce wait times for surgeries and diagnostic procedures, we have invested over $1 billion to support the innovative ideas of hospitals to make it faster and easier to access care.”

The Haldimand-Norfolk MPP said the province’s push to build more homes and attract people to smaller communities – such as a proposed 15,000-home development near Stelco’s Lake Erie steelworks at Nanticoke – will result in that population being without primary care and relying on the ER services of a very small hospital.

“I think we have to press pause, or we are going to have more Meg’s out there lying in a hospital for five or six days with a leg broken in three spots,” Brady observed. “That’s not world-class healthcare. When I see examples of like what Meg has gone through, how can I be confident that the right thing to do is to continue to bring more people to our community?”

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Meantime, Meghan Proctor is now recovering at their Blueline Road home with her husband and children.

“I feel 10 times better just being home,” she said on Wednesday afternoon. “Now that I’m home and my bones are back together, the pain is manageable, and I can get up on my crutches.”

A court and client representative at the Simcoe courthouse, Meghan will be off work for up to 12 weeks and cannot put weight on her leg for the next six weeks.

“What I don’t understand is, I couldn’t receive the care I needed at NGH, so why can’t they call any hospital within whatever range?” she questioned. “I would have gone to Ottawa that night if I had to.”

Meghan praised her husband for advocating for her and being by her side through the ordeal, referring to him as “a champion.”

“I cannot say enough good things about the care I received from the nurses at both hospitals,” she reflected. “They were incredible. They are overworked and underpaid. They did everything they could and did a very good job.”

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