Another triumph of government medicine



Tumour victim threatens to drill into his head if health system can't get him surgery



A GOLD Coast man says he will take a drill to his head in a desperate attempt to get brain surgery through the public health system. Mark Black, of Merrimac, was diagnosed two acoustic neuroma tumours situated on either side of his head six months ago. But the 52-year-old had already waited two years to get the MRI scan that finally confirmed what was wrong with him.

Mr Black is now slowly losing his hearing and developing facial paralysis because the tumours are touching his nerves.

Still with no answer on a surgery date and the grim possibility he might go deaf waiting, Mr Black plans to stand outside the Gold Coast Hospital on December 7 and drill into his head to receive emergency care if he does not get the response he is after the day before.

Mr Black has a follow-up appointment with an ear, nose and throat surgeon on December 6 but believes he is being shifted through a system that will put him back to where he started. The father of three and grandfather of one said he had been back and forth seeking help over the years but without any answers.

"I'm not blaming the doctors in this, I'm blaming the bureaucrats who don't fund the hospital enough to do the surgery that's needed," he said. "My main concern now is to have this first lot of surgery because the end result is I'll end up totally deaf and have facial paralysis. The longer I let it go the worse the outcome."

Mr Black said he woke every day feeling off balance, had ringing in the ears, facial spasms and dizziness. The former inventor and coffee shop owner said he could not work any more because of his condition. "There's no light at the end of the tunnel," he said. "They're (the hospital) using delaying tactics so they don't have to do it and in the meantime I'm sitting here suffering. "I don't want to push in front of someone else. I just want to be put on the list and dealt with fairly."

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1 comment:

  1. No disrespect to good nurses - but our hospitals have become nurse employment centres. Over the past decade, my mum and my brother both had heart attacks, mum had a serious car accident, my dad had cancer and I had a minor procedure. Each time I`ve been to the hospital, I`ve noticed there are HEAPS of nurses running around trying to look busy. Very few docotrs, but nurses everywhere. If you go into emergency, you`ll have 20 nurses running around doing "stuff", eventually a doctor will come and see you for 2 minutes, and then you go back to watching nurses running around.

    Here in Victoria, Jeff Kennett sacked thousands of nurses in the 1990s to save Victoria from bankrupcy. The strange thing is - hospital services didnt seem to suffer. When Labour won in 1999, they started hiring thousands of nurses (more than 10,000 nurses), and hospital waiting lists have gone up and service quality down.

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