Posted on 08/14/2002 3:57:48 PM PDT by aculeus
When Timaru man Ted Matthews woke up in Christchurch Hospital 17 days after undergoing heart surgery, his fingers and toes had turned black and he was looking at the prospect of amputation.
Twenty months later two of his fingers have rotted and fallen off and he is still waiting for the other two to be amputated.
He is crying out for the surgery to relieve the excruciating agony he has put up with for nearly two years.
Mr Matthews admits to screaming with the pain at times and that the pain treatment he receives sometimes makes him go off his head.
He just wants it over with.
His wife June said everyone had thought he would be fine after the heart operation.
"You certainly don't expect to go in for a heart operation and end up with your fingers turning black.
"He used to play the guitar and organ all the time. He loved it. He hasn't done it since the operation and probably will never do that again."
Mrs Matthews said her husband could not even dress himself because of the pain, she had to do it for him, and their social life was non-existent.
"He just sits there watching his fingers rot. That's all he can do.
"We can't go out because he can't manage in the toilets and if we do go down the pub for a little while and he needs to use the toilet, I send someone in after him to make sure he's all right," Mrs Matthews said.
"I'm past the embarrassment stage. Nothing embarrasses me now, but it's the pain that is bloody terrible," Mr Matthews added.
"Sometimes you just feel like giving up but you can't really.
"It's been very hard on mum."
The couple said the smell of the fingers rotting was also terrible, especially in bed at night when it got hot.
But they are not holding the medical staff or Christchurch Hospital to blame.
Instead, they believe the system that has let them down; the system that means he could be waiting another six months or even more to get any relief.
"It's bloody terrible the system we have now. We've really gone downhill in New Zealand with the health," Mr Matthews said.
"I'm speaking out because if we don't, no one will realise just how bad the system is."
Mrs Matthews said while it was terrible for her husband, the whole family had been upset.
Mr Matthews had initially been told the problem with his fingers and toes had been caused by his diabetes.
But when he got his medical files, following a battle, he found the problem had been caused because medical staff had missed his vein when putting in an intravenous line and cut off a main artery to his fingers and toes.
"I spent five hours a day with him and could see his fingers going blue and went to the nurse to get the vascular surgeons to come and take a look and she said the surgeons didn't work on the weekend," Mrs Matthews said.
"So on Monday first thing, I demanded that a surgeon come to see Ted and I was told they were in surgery. Then the head of the intensive care unit came and had a look and got one of the surgeons who turned up in his theatre gear and said the fingers would have to come off."
Mr Matthews was told his condition occurred in fewer than one in a million people.
He said his complaint was not about what had gone wrong, but about the ongoing pain, the pain relief upsetting his whole life, that his life had been on hold for so long, and that there was no certainty of when it would end.
"They decided not to amputate at the time and see how much of my fingers they could save and that it would take about six months for them to rot off. It's what they call dry gangrene.
"The fingers on one hand came right and my toes, but when I went back after six months the `die-back' in the other fingers was continuing and they said it would take another six months, and then it was another six months.
"When the surgeon saw me last time he said `right, it's time they came off, we'll get you into the hospital right away'.
"I expected three weeks to wait at the most and then I got a letter this morning (Wednesday) saying they hope to get me in in six months but there's no guarantees and I just want to know how many more six months there'll be.
"I just want to get them off and get on with life."
Christchurch Hospital did not respond to Herald inquiries on Wednesday.
Just like something from a Monty Python sketch.
Really.
I think it cost us $30US.
We didn't need to wait for "...the doctor has to contact ... yada, yada"
Something smells about this article and it ain't his fingers. What Main artery exists that feeds both fingers AND toes???
Actually, I've heard on a talk-back radio today that the two fingers that "went off" went when he applied a scissors on them...
Horrors of real life under socialism are always darker than any morbid joke.
Seriously, though these stories should serve as a warning to Americans of what could happen here. We had the sense to stop Hillary but we now must recognize and combat the incrementalist approach her ilk always fall back to.
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