Emigrating to New Zealand - Beware NZ's ailing healthcare system

Coming from the UK, we researched the NZ health system as best we could from a distance. We asked people, we went online, we spoke to health professionals and then we took the plunge, believing that as permanent residents, we would be entitled to full health care just like anyone else. I mean, for the last nine years we’ve paid the same tax as everyone else, so why would we assume it to be any different? And when a country prides itself on its health system and successive governments claim to annually pump millions of dollars into it, why would an immigrant think they would get anything less than stellar service? Really?

The emergency system hasn’t let us down - I must point that out. We’ve had two paediatric appendectomies in the nine years of living here and although we’ve fumbled through a system which is overloaded, underfunded and at best a tired bureaucratic, slow moving monster, we were glad of the care our children received. My problems personally have come with an average pain-that-won’t-go-away type complaint and three years on, I still have my pain and a hard won diagnosis, but am no nearer to getting rid of my problem.

In January 2012 I noticed a pain that wouldn’t seem to go away. In April that year, I went to see my GP with a pain under my right rib that had become increasingly problematic. He ran some bloods which all came back normal, put in a referral for urology and we waited. I received a reject letter from that department a few months later. ‘Too busy, can’t see you, sorry and all that.’

I went back to my doctor and he tried a different department and asked for another medical test up at the infamous Waikato Hospital. Another reject letter and on we went. Each time I visited my doctor I would pay my money and be greeted by the now familiar look of surprise. Who was I? How could he help?

I changed doctors. I was referred to Gastroenterology. I was rejected. Non urgent, unimportant, too busy for me. My doctor was going to ring them and speak to someone. He would get back to me. I heard nothing...and nothing... and nothing and my pain became worse. Eventually I switched to another doctor in the same practice, paying $45 every time I went to see her. Over two hours wages to be referred, rejected...oh yes, she would ring them for me...she’d been off sick...she’d been on holiday... ‘How about I try cutting out gluten...oh, you don’t eat gluten...how about dairy...oh you don’t eat that either? Bit stuck then really. I’ll ring them' ...nothing.

In September 2013, surviving on liquid food supplements, I changed doctors again. He was lovely, sympathetic and disgusted on my behalf. He ordered a scan, an ultrasound and more bloods. Nothing. He wrote to the hospital and asked Gastroenterology to please see me urgently. My inability to eat proper food had made an old B12 deficiency rear its ugly head and he put me on fortnightly B12 injections.

In March 2014 I was at work and received a phone call on my mobile. It was Gastroenterology. Instead of sending me the faceless, cowardly letter, they were ringing round those selected to be bumped off the list. Again. Could I try a Fodmap diet, found to be quite successful with cases like mine? I read the ingredients list from my breakfast aloud, a tin of soy milk fortified by vitamins and minerals. ‘Does this contain any of those items she wished me to cut out? No?’

I burst into tears and cried for about five minutes making little sense. My stomach hurt and I felt completely hopeless. I had something terrible, I was going to die and nobody cared, least of all the New Zealand health system. I was clearly a closet hypochondriac and needed a psychologist, not a stomach doctor. I made an appointment and went back to my nice GP. I asked for mental health intervention as obviously it was all in my head. There was no other conclusion. I couldn’t go out for dinner with my family, viewed every plate of food as a possible threat and was putting on weight from the junk in the food supplement. I made sure I kept all the hospital documentation for my poor husband to sue them all after I died. ‘So please can I see a mental health worker, better still, could I spend some time in the mental unit, by myself with a library book and no meal breaks?’

‘No,’ he reassured me. ‘It isn’t in your head. This is very real. I’ll try again.’

Then it came. The wonderful letter giving me an appointment at the Waikato Hospital. Sorry for me, the nurse ringing to bump me off the list had actually made me an appointment to see a real live gastro doctor who knew all about these things. So important was this visit, my husband and I delayed a trip south to see our daughter at university. This was the event of the year. I could hardly miss it, could I?

Husband and I sat on the plastic chairs in the office of this very important lady feeling as though we had finally won an audience with the queen. She read my notes on the screen, turned to me with a lovely smile and said, ‘Tell me about how all this is affecting you?’

I wasn’t expecting that! 

Cue tears, leaving husband to explain.

Hence began a relationship with the second person truly interested in my condition and willing to go into bat for me. More bloods and referrals for tests, including the dreaded colonoscopy and endoscopy. When I saw her a few months later, little had happened. She was surprised. ‘Well, I don’t understand. You’re on the list,’ she said. ‘It should have happened by now.’ I left, disappointed and went on my way to return again at the next call.

Eventually around July, a scan occurred as my lovely gastroenterologist went on a wild goose chase for something she thought it could possibly be. And the bad news. ‘Your gall bladder isn’t working. We gave you morphine during the scan and...it started working and filled up with bile...and stopped again. Yep, that’s gonna hurt. Sorry and all that.’

And the big whammy. ‘Stop drinking that meal supplement stuff. It’s full of crap.’

Ok then. Supplement stopped and losing weight like an advert for Jenny Craig. 4kg’s in one week. Incredible. But at least I wasn’t masking the problem for them anymore. Surely now they would have to do something? Wouldn’t they?

Another appointment with the gastroenterologist, who scratched her head at my dramatic weight loss and flapping clothes. ‘I just don’t understand why you haven’t been given a date for the colonoscopy and endoscopy. It’s been months and months.’ The kind woman marched down to the booking office and wrote my name on the list herself in biro and then returned with an astounding piece of information. My permanent residency status was working against me.

What? Rerun that.

Yes, apparently, due to my residency status, my name was stuck in another list, going round and round fruitlessly waiting for someone to contact me to prove that I was eligible for treatment under the New Zealand health system. This was the first I had heard of this. Nobody had ever contacted me. I asked for clarification four times, feeling vaguely stupid with each reply. ‘But it’s ok,’ she said kindly. ‘It’s quite common. You come out of that list and then they bump you off the surgical list.’ So like an anteroom for immigrants then to keep the waiting lists looking all shiny and clean? ‘I’ve taken you out and put you on my list. And it is my list and nobody is going to take you off. I won’t let them.’

Colonoscopy and endoscopy duly booked. The date and time were written on a scrappy piece of paper which I clutched in my hand. I spent the next few weeks waiting for that phone call to tell me not to bother showing up. I drank the awful goop with the full expectation that I would arrive at the hospital and be turned away. Never mind, wasn't that kind of irrigation every now and then meant to be good for you?

I arrived at the hospital on the allotted day and underwent probably the most humiliating and at the same time, entertaining of medical procedures. A colonoscopy and endoscopy, on the same day. The result - an ulcer, a polyp and a five centimetre hole in the top of my stomach.

What?

Apparently yes. A hiatus hernia gone wrong. So that’s why I couldn’t eat after midday without feeling nauseous and coughing sporadically all night long.

So after two and a half years of pain, I finally knew what was wrong. Well, quite a few things really, including a funny little pancreas that God gave me and which came from left field. But hey, apart from that, all fixable right? 

Wrong.

‘It’s a five month waiting list to see the surgeon and if he assesses you as appropriate for surgery, then you go on another five month waiting list to get it done.’

Seriously?

When after a few more months I didn’t even have an appointment to see a surgeon on the state system, I committed the ultimate sin. I raided my husband’s wallet and paid to see the same man privately - on the credit card. ‘That will be $183 for those ten minutes

please?’ And guess what, I had an appointment the same week. Same surgeon, private clinic.

Yes he would do the operation to remove my gall bladder but no, he didn’t want to have anything to do with the hole in my stomach. I’d have to learn to live with that bit. I broached the issue of the permanent residency. ‘Absolutely not. You’re entitled to healthcare just like anyone else. That NEVER happens.’

How could he account for all the other immigrants I had come across whilst telling this story in wider circles? He couldn’t. ‘It just doesn’t happen. It’s not true.’

Back to my lovely gastroenterologist. ‘Well, you definitely need the hernia dealing with. You can’t live like that. I’ll send you for a PH test. Unfortunately there’s only one doctor in this (massive-teaching-world-class?) hospital who does that and he’s just gone on sabbatical for 6 months.’ The visit ended with her now familiar mantra. ‘Get your citizenship as quickly as you can! Then scan your new passport and send the hospital a copy.’

Miracle of miracles, a few months later I was sent an appointment to see a surgeon prepared to see me regarding the hernia - fairly common, not life threatening but problematic for me. The one day of the year I couldn’t attend because of work and that’s the day of this appointment. With only two days’ notice of it, I didn’t even have time to talk to my boss and explain why I possibly couldn’t leave town for a very important course that I’d been booked on for months. She’d already let me have countless time off for doctors’ appointments and days off sick when I was crawling round the floor in agony. I rang the hospital. ‘Oh well, can’t help you sorry. Next appointment available is in two months’ time. January 2015.’

Seriously?

I went to my work engagement, tearful and upset. It’s wasn’t their fault. With two days’ notice, it was nobody’s fault except the hospital. As usual.

Another cardinal sin occurred and my understanding husband let me have the credit card again. I saw the surgeon I would have to wait two months on the state system to see, within two days at the cost of another $182. By this time I’d given up adding up how many hours I would have to work to pay that back, in addition to the $17.50 once a fortnight for the B12 jabs and the doctor’s fee every time I needed to check in with him. No matter. I saw the surgeon. ‘I’ll provisionally do the surgery, based on the results of the PH test next February. Let’s meet again once I’ve got the results of that.’ 

I sat in his office and knew that the promised appointment with this surgeon wouldn’t be until the middle of next year, if I was lucky. I also knew that I would have to pay privately to see him in his rooms again, because I couldn’t take any more of this. Kerching. For him. More of my hard earned dollars to pay for something the tax man had already netted out of my wages.

The surgical booking clerk for the first surgeon rang me and told me she was sorry for the problems I’d had and no, my residency status definitely should not impact on my level of priority. She’d try and fit me in early January for a gall bladder removal...

It’s nearly Christmas. I know what’s wrong with me, but I’m no further on. I’m hopelessly out of pocket and have no date for my surgery. I’m stuck in the system. At a cost of over $500 I have been prompted to get my citizenship. I will be submitting a copy of my passport to the hospital to add to my records. Amazingly there is a process in existence for this. If it didn’t matter, it begs the question of why there is a process at all but hey. There is and I’m certainly going to use it.

I guess the point of my story is this. My conditions aren’t life threatening but I didn’t know that. I’ve had almost three years of thinking that I was going to die, starving to death while nobody cared. In an entire system, I’ve met two people willing to stick their necks out for me and go a little further to get me the help I need, but they too are now stuck in an unwieldy and fallible system - and as frustrated as I am.

We took out health insurance for my husband recently. He’s the captain of our ship and I couldn’t bear to see him go through this kind of thing, being pushed around an unworkable system looking for relief. It's expensive, but he's our breadwinner. What else can we do?

I’ve had to cut my hours at work, at the same time as paying to see surgeons. I go out for dinner with my family but eat little or nothing. I have psychological problems with food now, seeing it as a threat and a causer of pain so when this is all over, I will need counselling. I’ve already started on that front, but because my problems are real and not psychological, she can’t really help me until the problem is fixed. How can she overwrite wrong thoughts about food that are currently right?

I wish that this was an isolated story in our antiquated system of shame. But it isn’t. I know of a friend’s son who waited four months for removal of his prostate and any kind of treatment, after having been told that he had cancer. My own daughter, a student in the south, paid $80 for an ambulance with chronic stomach pains only to be forced to sign a discharge form and sent out into the winter night at 3am, a female on foot, in pain, because the emergency room ‘wasn’t likely to get to her’ within the acceptable time for seeing patients. What a great way of fudging the figures. 

Incensed, my husband and I made the five hour journey down to see her, marched her into the university doctor and refused to leave without an ultrasound referral. We drove her to the radiology department, out came the increasingly busy credit card and hey presto, they could fit us in. She had emergency surgery a week later due to what the credit card’s timely intervention found.

Or should we talk about my other daughter, called for facial surgery and left sitting in a waiting room for five hours without anyone coming near us? Or the poor old man who sat in there with us until his surgeon called his mobile and asked where he was. ‘But I’ve been sitting her since 7am,’ the poor chap stated, accidentally on speakerphone. This was at 1pm. ‘Nobody told me,’ said the surgeon. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

And on and on it goes. I watched my desperate colleague be told in July that she had three areas of aggressive skin cancer on her face and cope with no sign of a surgery date for more than three months.

I wish we had known this as immigrants when we first arrived. We would have made significantly different choices and definitely should have engaged healthcare. But when you’re struggling to make ends meet and there are six in your family, it seems like an irrational cost. And many of the private health insurance policies have loop holes and caveats and other jargon designed to ensure that you don't get the help you need, but they still get the premiums.

I won’t be eating Christmas dinner again this year. One of the surgeons I paid thought I could possibly eat it next year. But I’m reluctant to get my hopes up. I mean, I’m a few days off 2015 and it no longer feels like a realistic goal. I know that I’m kidding myself.

I’m not just bleating about my own problems, which compared to many others are minor. But if this helps just one other person fighting a losing battle with New Zealand’s abysmal healthcare system, then so be it. You are not alone.

Or if you’re thinking of emigrating here and believe that permanent residency and a regular donation to Inland Revenue via your income will ensure that you get fair and decent treatment, think again. It won’t. But then again, you'll never know the truth about that little detail.

I’ve met people, often breast cancer sufferers who speak well of the NZ Healthcare system, although for every one of them, there are twenty of me. But nobody is listening and nobody cares. Choose well for yourself and your family and don’t make the same mistake we did. The system is NOT to be trusted.

This morning, I submitted mine and my husband’s passports to the Waikato Hospital so they can update our status to citizen. Again I was met with disbelief - ‘but you don’t need to do that...’

Evidently I do and now I have. But I did check with my husband by text that I wasn’t a total fruit loop and that he was actually present when the reason for the delays in my healthcare were blamed on my permanent residency status more than once. ‘Definitely!’ he concurred, so if I’m not mad, maybe somebody else is...

#health #pain #emigration #KTBowes #immigration 

...Just as an addition to this, it's now nearing the end of January. I suspect I've fallen off the list again - or sunk to the bottom of the pile of, 'neurotic people needing surgery so let's make them wait longer to see if they die first.'