A Swift Current woman says she had to wait seven days before she got the mental health help she needed.
Tara Arnold went in for surgery to get her ovaries removed in Swift Current on Dec. 13. She expected it to be a routine procedure with six weeks recovery, but due to major complications she was brought to St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon for emergency surgery.
“I have never felt pain like I felt this last week,” said Arnold.
The 32-year-old now has a colostomy bag and is looking at six months recovery.
“I’m a pet groomer, I can’t work with a colostomy bag as a pet groomer. My husband has had to take time off work to be with me. He’s not getting paid for that,” she said.
Arnold said she suffers from depression and anxiety and that she reached out to hospital staff for help, but was let down.
“I thought I would get help by telling them how bad I mentally was doing and I didn’t get any help,” she said.
She said she was told that due to holiday staffing she would need to take an ambulance to Royal University Hospital, where she could be seen by an emergency room psychiatrist.
“That was just deplorable,” said her husband, James Arnold.
“She’s in this kind of rough shape and you want to send her somewhere else to see a psychiatrist over at another hospital, by ambulance, when that psychiatrist can just get in a car and come and see her.”
Seven days later a psychiatrist paid her a visit but she said that’s too long to wait.
“It shouldn’t be like that, but if this can help one person get through it and it can help one person not feel the way that I do then it’s worth it,” she said.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority said someone who is already a patient can be referred to a mental health professional and they will be seen in order of priority.
Psychiatric service can be brought directly to patients, but the authority said there are times when a patient would have to be transferred to RUH to get mental health care.
