AFFAIRS of the heart have bound the lives of Ken and Elaine Grieve for more than six decades.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This year they celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary and as the milestone approaches they carefully look to the care of Ken's heart to ensure it continues to beat and additional chapters will be added to their love story.
For more than 24 years they have called Old Bar home and in recent years Ken and Elaine have sought the medical support of cardiologist, Dr Sesh Narasimhan to manage the health of his heart. Fifteen years ago a triple bypass improved the function of Ken's heart but today he wages war with the persistent pain of angina.
As a public patient, Ken and Elaine say they have experienced numerous challenges when receiving cardiac treatment in Manning Hospital in Taree and John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle and they now look to Hunter New England Local Health District (HNELHD) to give the green light to a public-private partnership agreement with the Mayo Private Hospital Cardiac Catheter Laboratory in Taree.
Manning Hospital Medical Staff Council Chair, Dr Murray Hyde Page and Dr Narasimhan are driving a campaign to secure public patient access to the hospital and recently welcomed the support of member for Myall Lakes, Stephen Bromhead.
Mr Bromhead stated that he could "see no reason why public patients should be required to attend a hospital in Newcastle" when the cardiac catheter laboratory is in Taree. Mr Bromhead said he had spoken with HNELHD and the NSW Minister for Health and "I am sure that through negotiation between Mayo Hospital and Hunter New England Health a positive outcome will be reached."
Ken, 87 and Elaine, 85, hope their story of the human experience of the public health system in regional NSW will contribute to the discussion and assist HNELHD to favourably assess the proposed public-private agreement.
In October last year Ken's heart needed help. He was breathless and in pain, and the urgent need for medical intervention saw him booked into John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle for an angiogram and treatment. According to Ken and Elaine, the expectation was that a coronary stent would be implanted into an artery to improve the blood flow.
The 8.30am appointment in Newcastle presented a transportation challenge for Ken and Elaine and so they decided to travel a day earlier, to Cooranbong, to stay with their daughter, Kerrie Farleigh. It was still a 45 minute drive from the hospital but it was less than the two hour travel time from Taree.
The additional challenge of travel added to the emotional, financial and physical stress of preparing for the surgery and so Ken and Elaine sought the assistance of Community Transport to get them both to Cooranbong. The next day, it was their daughter Kerrie who delivered them to John Hunter Hospital.
Elaine says Ken was admitted, "given an angiogram and they said there was too much scar tissue from his previous surgeries and they couldn't do a stent. So we went back to our daughter and then she bought us home the next day."
The decision to not do the coronary stent was not expected and Elaine says "Ken returned home very depressed".
"To us it was a waste of time travelling down," Elaine said.
The trip to Newcastle did nothing to alleviate the significant impact of the blocked artery on Ken's health. He remained in pain, breathless and his emotional and physical condition continued to deteriorate.
"We went to see Dr Sesh a few days later and he was most angry and had Ken admitted to Manning Base," Elaine explained.
"We had a day waiting in Manning Base and Ken was then taken down by ambulance down to John Hunter."
The following day Ken and Elaine's son, Trevor Grieve drove Elaine to Newcastle so that she could be with her husband. His visit to the Manning Valley allowed Elaine to not have to seek the services of Community Transport.
A few days later, Ken had the coronary stent inserted into the blocked artery.
"Ken arrived at the hospital on the Friday. He was there Saturday and Sunday and they put the stent in on Monday. It was about 10 days and he'd been down and back, down and back and finally, finally they had a stent put in," Elaine said.
Dr Narasimhan is scathing of the decisions that occurred and the timeline that transpired in the treatment of Ken's cardiac condition.
"When Mr and Mrs Grieve came back in tears and she said, 'He can't even walk around', what they didn't tell you was that I blew my gasket and I picked up the phone and I didn't stop there," Dr Narasimhan said.
"I wrote a formal complaint about the way Mr and Mrs Grieves were treated and they said, doing a vein graft stent is a high risk case.
"It is not high risk and I sent all the latest evidence to the cardiology department ... this is constant. It's not one or two - it's constant.
"It's not just about the patient, it's also about Mrs Grieves, to not have her in tears telling me that he is walking around in pain."
Ken is happy to share that the coronary stent has "improved things quite a bit ... I'm not breathless anymore and am not having pain."
"We don't want to seem ungrateful for the care we have received from the staff at John Hunter. They were wonderful to us but the system falls down on the process to get treatment," Elaine said.
"How good it would have been if this procedure could have been done in Taree," she added.
ainslee.dennis@fairfaxmedia.com.au
