KEY POINTS:
Breast cancer patient Louise MacKenzie waited three months for vital radiotherapy - and when she got it she also got burned.
The lecturer at Auckland's Unitec business school was meant to start radiotherapy within four weeks of having a partial mastectomy. She had her surgery in the first week of July, but radiotherapy started only in the first week of October.
She is among the thousands of New Zealanders whose health is affected by growing waiting lists for non-urgent treatment. The general trend in elective treatment is causing surgery such as varicose vein treatment to become almost impossible unless patients are in pain.
Today, in the first of a two-part series, the Herald reveals that criteria required to qualify for treatment vary wildly across New Zealand - which the Government admits is creating significant distress for patients.
Cancer patient Ms MacKenzie is among the thousands caught up in a system which requires many patients to get sicker to get cured.
She is a "priority C" breast cancer patient. At Auckland City Hospital they are now waiting for two to three times the recommended time to start treatment. They wait for eight to 12 weeks, but the Health Ministry stipulates four weeks is the "maximum acceptable".
With fulltime work and a mortgage to pay, Ms MacKenzie opted for night sessions at the hospital - only to be told that they had been cancelled because of a lack of staff.
To fit all those extra patients in to day sessions, her recommended treatment of 25 sessions over five weeks was shortened to 20 sessions over four weeks.
"What they would do is give me a higher blast each time. Overall, I would still get the same amount of radiotherapy, just given to me in a higher dosage over a shorter time.
"They weren't really quite sure how that was going to work, but I was going to be part of a research group that would show them how that would work."
Ms MacKenzie suffered burns on the right side of her body, a relatively common side-effect of radiotherapy.
"It was raw and very painful. I was having to dress it a couple of times a day for over a month before someone thought to tell me that I was entitled to see a district nurse."
Ms MacKenzie went to her GP and within the hour a district nurse called at her house to show her the proper way to change the dressings.
"Within three days everything cleared up and I had my first good night's sleep in months.
"This whole thing - the ADHB just need to be lined up and shot. I now have seven friends who are undergoing treatment for breast cancer ... A friend of mine has just started her chemotherapy. She went through the public system and the delays were such that she went from ... needing to have a partial mastectomy to having a full mastectomy on both sides."
National's health spokesman Tony Ryall yesterday produced an undated Auckland Hospital letter to a patient stating the average wait was 14 to 16 weeks. He is adamant it is current.
But the hospital's oncology manager, Joanna Easingwood, said that was the wait in December and early January when the service was disrupted by industrial action.
Yesterday, she said the hospital was sending about eight patients a week to Sydney for therapy.
Although waiting times had reduced, it would continue to offer the Australian option until waiting times dropped further.
