The waiting list for breast cancer-related surgeries is growing as patients and doctors face travel challenges here and abroad due to COVID-19, Breast Cancer Foundation chief administrator Janette Fitzgerald has said.
Fitzgerald, responding to Cayman Compass queries on the situation, said surgeries, such as reconstruction, making adjustments to previous reconstruction operations, and removal of excess skin resulting from full mastectomies, are among the procedures impacted.
She said due to challenges from COVID, there are also “women waiting for removal of implants because they have moved or are making them ill or in pain, as well as those needing actual implants”.
Among the treatments affected by the backlog is liposuction – the only medical option for long-term lymphoedema – to enable a breast cancer patient to recover a “decent amount of use of the affected arm”.
“It’s not just reconstruction. It’s when you’ve had a radical mastectomy, … [which] the surgeon decided to [do to] save your life. Then you can be left with all sorts of folds and wings, even under your arms, and you need that plastic surgeon to correct that afterwards, because it’s so uncomfortable, so painful. So there’s a lot of ladies still waiting now for any kind of surgery,” said Fitzgerald, who also addressed the backlog issue when she appeared on the Compass talkshow The Resh Hour last Wednesday.
Fitzgerald and cancer survivor Julie Pritchard sought to highlight the issue in October for Breast Cancer Awareness month.
Earlier this month, Dr. Edward Fitzgerald (no relation to Janette Fitzgerald), head of healthcare at KPMG Bermuda, speaking at the annual Cayman Islands Healthcare Conference, said that COVID-19 had led to a growing global backlog of surgical cases that could take roughly three years to clear in order to normalise procedures.
Cayman faces similar surgical issues
At present, Janette Fitzgerald said, the Breast Cancer Foundation is working with around 10 women who are awaiting procedures after being referred to the charity by their healthcare providers.
“Normally you would get your surgeries over and done within a reasonable space of time and that’s not happening. Some of these ladies had their surgeries… just as we started to cope with COVID in April, May, and they are still waiting now, whereas normally they would have been back on the full road to recovery. They would have had the surgery, had their reconstruction, and getting back to the new normal,” she said.
She added that it has reached the point, in some cases, where women are going “to have to have surgery again at some point and it’s just making the journey harder”.
Fitzgerald said that visiting plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Anne Dancey, who is currently on island, is one of a few doctors in Cayman who perform lymph node transplants – which is taking a healthy lymph node from the groin, for example, and moving it to under the arm.
“Dr. Anne is going to do a conference/meeting with a group of our ladies in the near future to tell them about what she can do here on island to improve their situation. With the almost 300 persons registered with us, we will be sending out an e-mail to all off them about Anne being here until December,” she said.
Dancey, who is based in the UK, will be back and forth in Cayman until next year.
Need for prosthetics
Fitzgerald said she and her colleagues are seeing a lot of the breast cancer survivors when they come to get either prosthetics or the specially made bras that can only be found at the Foundation’s office in Grand Harbour.
“We do see most of the ladies who come for the prosthetics because they can’t even now… get off island to do the reconstruction,” she said, adding that with Dancey in Cayman, “those ladies will get to see her and make a plan”.
Cancer survivor Julie Pritchard, who also appeared on The Resh Hour with Fitzgerald, shared her experience and the importance of having the support of the medical team as she underwent her treatment.
Pritchard said her cancer was detected last year during a routine mammogram.
She added she was lucky in that just as lockdown began she was able to secure treatment.
She advised women not to let fear prevent them from getting checked.
Fitzgerald added that, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Foundation’s annual gala has been moved to 22 Jan. 2022, but another smaller Christmas fundraiser will be held at Grand Old House on 27 Nov. and limited to 250 guests.
The 2022 gala is scheduled for 1 Oct. next year.
With between two and five breast cancer patients being diagnosed every week, Fitzgerald said the Foundation continues to need funds, and that its website has been updated to enable the public to make donations.
Editor’s note: For clarification, the stats quoted in this article are drawn from BCF’s numbers using anecdotal experiences from clients. The Compass, like the BCF, cannot independently verify those figures as the local cancer register is a voluntary reporting mechanism and patients are not mandated to report their cancer diagnosis.
Related Videos
