But after five rescheduled appointments and limited communication from hospital staff, 60-year-old Darrin Birley says he has little faith his troubles will be over any time soon.
Last November, the mechanical engineer was rushed by helicopter to Dunedin Hospital after hitting his head on concrete steps outside a friend’s home, suffering what doctors would later tell him was an "extremely severe traumatic brain injury".
"It was pretty horrific. I was in a coma for about one month."
To save Mr Birley’s life, surgeons performed an urgent craniectomy, removing a portion of his skull to help reduce the pressure of his swelling brain.
"When my wife got to Dunedin the doctors turned around and told her ‘we don’t know how this is going to go. We give him a 50:50 chance’.
"Me being me, I’m stubborn. I don’t give in."
Mr Birley said after waking from the coma and spending a few weeks at Puāwai Rehabilitation Unit, he was cleared to return home in early January, minus the fragment of his skull removed during surgery.
He said staff informed him he could expect to be booked in for a cranioplasty procedure in Dunedin in either late February or early March.
Until then, he would need to wear a protective helmet to cover the missing part of his skull, was restricted from driving for six months and could not return to work.
When the surgery window came and went without any contact from hospital staff, he reached out himself, only to be informed his surgery date had been moved to May, Mr Birley said.
"So then they booked me another appointment a couple of months later and then that got cancelled," he said.
"And then they made another one and that got cancelled."
Mr Birley said he acknowledged a minor heart attack he suffered in April had complicated matters, but it could not explain away the poor communication he had received from Dunedin Hospital throughout the entire process.
"We’ve had to chase everything. They haven’t even contacted us back and told us what’s going on or anything.
"I haven’t been notified; I haven’t been asked. They’ve just done it behind my back.
"So not very happy."
Mr Birley said the now-regular trips between Hāwea and Dunedin were also taking their toll, not only on him but also his wife, who needed to travel to Dunedin to receive treatment for terminal cancer.
"Between trying to deal with all of this and trying to keep OK, it’s been an absolute nightmare."
Health NZ southern group director of operations Hamish Brown told the Wānaka Sun elective procedures, such as Mr Birley’s, often had to be rescheduled to allow acute surgical cases or trauma cases to proceed.
"This is what occurred in Darrin’s case, and we acknowledge this can be frustrating.
"We apologise for the delays in completing Darrin’s surgery and understand this must be a distressing time for him."
Mr Brown said Mr Birley had now been scheduled for surgery in November "following cardiologist advice".
While Mr Birley hopes his procedure, now scheduled for November 6, will go ahead, he is not holding his breath.
"They could change it again and I’m back to square one, you know?"
