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A woman from Matata diagnosed with lung cancer 10 months ago has been booked in for surgery and then bumped three times at Waikato Hospital.
"I'm sitting here nearly a year later with no treatment, so of course it is scary," said Pauline Spark on TV One.
Mrs Spark, who lost all her possessions in the Matata floods, said the cancelling of the last surgery was devastating.
"That was the worst one because you psych yourself up and you are all ready to go and they say, no sorry," she said.
She is hoping an appointment for surgery on Friday results in the surgery actually taking place.
Mrs Spark's case was first discussed at Waikato Hospital on July 4 and then again on August 1, said Jan Adams, Waikato District Health Board's general manager of health services.
A surgery on September 13 was cancelled due to an acute cardiac case taking priority.
She was rebooked for September 19 but the first case on the thoracic list took longer than planned.
Mrs Spark was second on the list.
A booking for surgery on October 3was again postponed due to an acute cardiac case.
The hospital had apologised to Mrs Spark each time her surgery was postponed and regretted it had happened.
The hospital could not guarantee that the surgery would take place this week.
"[Other cases of surgery] are frequently postponed because of acute admissions but we do try to keep the number of postponements to the absolute minimum," Mrs Adams said.
Waikato DHB handles nearly 70,000 admissions a year and more than 60 per cent of them are acute cases.
- NZPA
