Women face long wait for breast reconstruction

BEN CURREN/The Marlborough Express

THE WAITING GAME: Liz Chapman wasn't sure if she wanted breast reconstruction surgery when she had cancer in 2001. She does now, but she'll have to wait for it.

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Women in the lower North Island and upper South Island face a long wait for breast reconstruction surgery, with many district health boards unable to take any new referrals.

Blenheim woman Liz Chapman had surgery to remove cancer from her breast in May 2001, followed by several weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

She did not consider getting reconstructive surgery at the time because she was focused only on getting better. "My surgeon said at the time, `you're bound to change your mind'."

It was common for women to delay reconstruction until the threat of cancer had passed, he told her.

Now, she has been cancer-free for nearly 10 years, and six months ago she started thinking about reconstructive surgery.

Marking nearly a decade cancer-free was a positive thing for Mrs Chapman and she wanted "to feel like a woman again".

"With my job, I get to go to some nice events and wear nice evening dresses, and it would be nice to be able to wear scoop necks and things like that."

But her specialist told her she could not even join a waiting list to have the operation done publicly.

Private surgery would cost up to $30,000, which she was not prepared to spend.

Mrs Chapman said it was "terrible" that women did not have access to surgery nationwide.

"The thing that annoys me the most is I've worked the whole time ... I kept my job going and paid all my taxes.

"It's not as if I'm doing it to get something more ... I just want to replace what I had."

A Nelson Marlborough District Health Board spokeswoman said primary breast reconstruction – done at the time of the mastectomy – was available through NMDHB, but later reconstructions could only be done through Hutt Valley DHB.

Wellington's Capital and Coast DHB also contracts breast constructions out to the Hutt, but the rate of surgeries is low.

Hutt DHB acting chief executive Michael Hundleby said patients from Mrs Chapman's area could not currently join the waiting list because of the backlog of patients.

"Since October last year we have been undertaking delayed breast reconstructions for approximately 20 women who had been given certainty of treatment when we stopped taking referrals for delayed breast reconstructions.

"However, we are still only able to perform one or two delayed breast reconstruction operations each month so, at this stage, it will be towards the end of this year before we have completed all of those operations."

By then the DHB hoped to have a plan for increasing the number of operations it could perform and addressing the backlog of women who had been waiting for an operation.

- © Fairfax NZ News