Dunedin hospital a lifesaver for me and my community

 

How has Dunedin hospital saved your life? 

For my family and I it has been a literal lifeline. 

I seem to be a bit more hospital-prone than most people.

 

Without the hospital my family would be missing a daughter, mother, sister, breadwinner...and Dunedin a city councillor. 

When I was 13, I was thrown off a horse and ruptured my spleen.

 

We were far out of town at home, Larnach Castle on Otago Peninsula, which was a long way from the hospital in 1981 Dunedin.

 

It was too urgent to wait for an ambulance, so my poor mother had to drive me into A&E and endure an agonising wait while they saved my life from the burst spleen and huge blood loss.

It was her fastest journey ever along that very windy road, there was no rescue helicopter then; it would arrive 17 years later.

 

Every second counted as I turned paler from internal bleeding and held my painful stomach. 

A large operation and three blood transfusions later, colour returned to my cheeks and  relief to my mother's eyes. 

A couple of decades later I was happily pregnant, looking forward to an August baby, when things fell to bits and I had an early surprise in June. 

My maternity carer spotted an anomaly with my blood pressure, which immediately turned into a dash for a 16-day hospital stay. 

An emergency Caesarean followed, with a touch-and-go situation for my 5 and a-half-week early baby and myself, followed by more surgery when things went very downhill for me.

 

It was a traumatic, but lucky, introduction to a precious new life. 

The hospital at that time was a bit of a hodge-podge. My baby was on one floor in an over-crowded NICU, and I was on a different floor, having to be painfully wheeled to see her. 

I had an in-depth look at the already stretched hospital system and the stress hospital services were under.

I was extremely fortunate that as a higher risk pregnancy I had an obstetrician, to whom I believe we owe our lives, and who, along with my midwife, fought for my and my baby's care in the challenging hospital system. That was 2003. 

And then, 2010. The year of neurosurgery. I had three operations in 16 months. 

I had an urgent diagnosis of chairi malformation (which causes terrible headaches, like walking around with an axe in your head) and syringomyelia (which causes pain and weakness). Two weeks later I was in hospital and having brain surgery, with a locum. 

Neurosurgery in Dunedin was a bit of a mess. 

That first operation failed, so I had the news, from a different locum, that I needed more. So a different doctor performed another lot of surgery. 

In the meantime, the outrage about the threat of Dunedin losing neurosurgery was mounting.

 

I was interviewed in my pyjamas about what our brain services meant to me, in my case, literally the difference between life and death. 

A week after the second surgery I was back in A&E with meningitis. 

The drama went on, as it took six months to get an MRI. I finally got that privately, and then received the news I needed more brain surgery. That's when I went to Australia and paid for my third operation.

I am a single parent, and I had to minimise the risk  I wouldn't be there for my child. 

I was lucky as I had savings ,which meant I could go overseas to get that life-saving surgery, in a brand-new hospital, with a specialist in my condition.

The difference in facilities was eye-opening. Surely New Zealanders deserve the same standard of hospital as our fortunate Australian cousins?

The facilities here could sure be improved, but my life has been saved three times by Dunedin hospital staff _ and they saved my daughter's life, too. 

Many of you will have similar stories.

 

Of emergencies. Of battling your way through the health system. Of being turfed out the door seemingly too early. Of feeling panicked every time you smell the hospital smell. Of compassion for our over-worked health staff. Of shock at the conditions they work in. Of rage at a government reneging on promises to build us a new fit-for-
purpose hospital. 

My plea is simple. Let's keep fighting for a better hospital, better healthcare and a better outcome for the South. 

We need our new hospital built to the right specifications. The hospital that was promised.

 

The hospital to take care of now and future generations. The hospital that will keep saving our lives.