/Woman told she must wait for her uterus ‘to completely drop out’ before she can get help | CBC News

Woman told she must wait for her uterus ‘to completely drop out’ before she can get help | CBC News

Sherrie Hudson, 59, of Woodstock has been trying to get medical help for a gynecological problem since December, 2019 but after more than a year, she is still suffering every day.

“I’m very angry. I’m disappointed. We live in Canada where we’re supposed to have a wonderful health system,” she said. “It’s almost like, ‘You’re a female, this is what happens when you’re female — deal with it.'”

Hudson has a prolapsed uterus, which means the organ has slipped out of place and dropped into the vaginal canal.

Hudson said her sister, a retired nurse, examined her after she told her about the symptoms she was having.

“She says, ‘Well, your uterus is prolapsed — it’s right there. It’s sticking out.’ And I said ‘What?’ I didn’t even know what a prolapsed uterus was. It was falling out.”

After a trip to the emergency room at the Moncton Hospital in December 2019, Hudson was referred to a gynecologist,  who scheduled a surgery for March 2020. The surgery was cancelled because of COVID-19 and hasn’t been rescheduled.

Hudson has a family doctor in Fredericton but said it has been difficult to reach the office during the pandemic.

She has instead resorted to emergency rooms and walk-in clinics to try to get help for her prolapsed uterus and the constant leaking, which caused a severe bacterial infection.

‘I just want someone to take care of me’

While she was able to get an antibiotic for the infection after three separate trips to the Oromocto emergency room, Hudson feels she has fallen through the cracks.

“I was told that I would have to wait for either extremely heavy hemorrhaging or for the uterus to completely drop out before calling an ambulance and then they would remove it,” she said. “I have all kinds of concerns.”

Hudson has no expectation that anyone will be able to help her unless and until her situation becomes an emergency. She said it’s been extremely stressful, especially since she had cancer of the cervix in her 20s and now worries the cancer may have returned.

“They’ve even suggested that I push my own uterus up, and I cannot do that,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not a doctor, I’m not a nurse. I just want someone to take care of me, like the good old days.”

Katie Kelly, who is a pelvic floor physiotherapist and co-owner of a private women’s health clinic in Moncton called Reconnect, said Hudson’s story is “very common” among the patients she sees.

“Even if the organ has fallen most of the way out, they are coached to ‘reduce’ the prolapse by putting it back in,” Kelly said. “We treat this a lot in pelvic floor physio while they wait for surgery — teach them ways to keep it from coming out as often, how to monitor for infection, learn Kegels.”

Kelly said while it isn’t a medical emergency, it does have a significant impact on a woman’s quality of life and most are “shocked and scared” when it happens to them.

Hudson decided to share her very personal story after reading about Mhairi Agnew’s attempts to get help for ongoing abdominal pain in the public health-care system, before finally paying out-of-pocket to see a gynecologist at a private clinic.  

“I thought she was very brave,” Hudson said of 20-year-old Agnew. “Thank goodness someone has spoken up and I wasn’t surprised by her situation.”

“I mean, should women really have to suffer?”

Several years ago, the New Brunswick Medical Society began calling for a review of “women’s health and reproductive services,” including gynecological care, family planning and fertility, and has also raised it with the current government.

Minister of Health Dorothy Shephard said she is aware of two vacancies in New Brunswick for gynecologists.

“Every single aspect of our health-care system is challenged right now,” she said. “And women in particular — I think we have to pay attention.”

Some of the stress on the system could be relieved, Shephard said, if all doctors, specialists and nurse practitioners work within the publicly funded Medicare system, rather than working in private clinics or for private online health-care providers.

Shephard’s focus is on eliminating the waiting list for primary care within six months and on recruitment.

Even though her wait for medical help continues, Hudon said that she’s happy Agnew shared her story, and that women’s health is finally being discussed openly.

“I’m not being taken care of, and she wasn’t, and I’m sure there’s a lot of women that aren’t.”