Karen Murias waited 18 months for surgery and finally got a date for a procedure she hoped would bring relief of “excruciating pain” in her shoulder and abdomen.
But half an hour after getting a call on a Sunday in mid-March that a liver cyst would be removed the next day, her surgeon phoned to say the operation had been postponed because beds were being saved for a possible influx of COVID-19 patients. “I waited till I got off the phone but I bawled my eyes out,” she said from her home in Surrey, B.C.
Murias, 49, had been anticipating that surgery since September 2018 when she saw her family doctor about the condition. First, it took six months for an appointment with a specialist, then her surgery was scheduled over a year later. “It’s