A cancer patient says she’s worried her disease could “get the better of her” after her vital treatment was delayed due to a shortage of a chemotherapy drug.
Sixty-eight-year-old Carmen Sebastian said she arrived home Friday to a voicemail from Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital telling her that her next chemotherapy appointment had been cancelled.
The hospital told Sebastian that her treatment had been delayed due to a widespread shortage of the cancer drug Fluorouracil.
Sebastian is one of 35 patients at Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital whose chemotherapy drug treatment has been affected by the shortage.
“I was a little bit worried because I didn’t know how long this was going to go on,” she told CTV News Toronto. “Cancer moves quickly, you have to be careful.”
When she called the clinic again on Monday, Sebastian was told she still couldn’t book a new appointment because it wasn’t clear when the drug would be restocked.
Sebastian was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer just over a year ago. She’s been told that she only has a few years left to live.
“We’re going to die if we don’t have our drugs,” she told NewsTalk1010. “I think my family would like to have me around a little bit longer.”
Health Canada alerted hospitals back in October that shipments of the drug would be quarantined due to an ongoing investigation into nearly a dozen leaking or cracked vials discovered between June of 2015 and October of 2016.
In a statement provided to CTV News Toronto on Monday, Health Canada announced that it would release the embargoed shipments of the drug along with new guidelines for receiving hospitals.
“Due to the medical necessity of this medication, and in light of the current situation, Health Canada does not object to the release of these units,” the statement reads. “The release will be accompanied with an updated risk communication to health care professionals to instruct them to visually inspect the vials prior to use”
The agency released more than 3,600 vials of the drug yesterday.
While Mackenzie Richmond Hill Hospital blames a province-wide shortage of the medication, a spokesperson for the office of Health Minister Eric Hoskins told CTV News Toronto that other hospitals still have a five to 15 day supply.
“I’m not going to point fingers. Hospitals are obviously responsible for monitoring their own inventories,” Hoskins told reporters at Queen’s Park on Tuesday. “We have a coordinated process in place but we will be looking into this.”
Sebastian says she’s not sure why the hospital didn’t have a “back-up plan” for situations like this.
As of Tuesday afternoon, she was still waiting to hear from the hospital to reschedule her next treatment.
She’s hoping to get an appointment as soon as tomorrow.
“Don’t accept things to be as they are,” she told CTV News Toronto. “Look for ways to find a solution or look for help to find a solution because otherwise I would be sitting here and no one would care.”
