Esther Gomez Malaga

Malaga

Updated Tuesday, February 27, 2024-12:00

  • Health A patient with uterine cancer reports that she has been waiting for 120 days with severe pain for surgery in Malaga

Nobody wants to sit in front of the doctor and hear the word

cancer

.

Things get worse if, to the bad experience of hearing a diagnosis that is very scary, there is added a wait to receive treatment that seems eternal and eats you up inside.

That is the situation in which

Daniela

finds herself , a resident of

Fuengirola

(Málaga) who suffers from uterine cancer and who has been waiting for four months to be given a date for a surgical intervention at the

Costa del Sol Hospital in Marbella

.

Daniela was told that she had uterine cancer on May 3, 2023 and that she was included on a

waiting list

as a preferred patient.

Five months after that first diagnosis, on September 29 of that same year, she underwent surgery for the first time.

Just a few weeks later, when she went to collect the results, the doctor explained that the cancer

had spread

and that they would have to operate again.

The situation was repeated and at the hospital they put her on the waiting list again: "my world fell apart."

Today, he has spent four months, with his days and nights, waiting on the phone and on a notice from Costa del Sol that he has not yet received, despite the fact that they assured him - he explains to EL MUNDO - that his was still a preferential case.

Since the call did not arrive, in January of this year she contacted the hospital where they told her that she was not on the preferential list and that she should wait for them to call her because "there

are more cases

like mine and even, more urgent," he points out.

At her insistence, they have stopped meeting her requests.

Very concerned about her health and in the absence of the desired date for the operation, she presented claims to the Junta de Andalucía.

Writings that have had no effect - emphasizes Daniela - and today she is still waiting for vital surgery.

Meanwhile,

time is running against

her.

At

47 years old

and

a mother of two children

, a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl, the diagnosis and the wait of not knowing what will happen have her immersed in terrible anxiety.

Her life has been turned upside down, she suffers from insomnia and has been attacked by several herpes.

There are days when she can't get out of bed, but she draws strength from her weakness because "I have no other choice."

In any case, she prefers to have something to do rather than stay at home alone, thinking about it, she says ruefully.

Daniela not only suffers from

severe abdominal pain

, urinary incontinence and the physical discomfort typical of the disease, but she has been living day to day for all this time in a situation of anguish and anguish over knowing when she will be operated on and if as a consequence of the delay to who is being subjected, by the Andalusian health system, her state of health will suffer irreversible

consequences

when she undergoes surgery.

Today, she just wants to have surgery.

"The uncertainty is killing me

," she says.

"Look, it's been there for almost a year," she laments.

She has no complaints about the hospital staff, where the care is "very careful and spectacular," but she does not think the same about the bureaucratic issue that, in her opinion, "leaves a lot to be desired."

Patient Advocate

Thus, at the beginning of February he decided to ask for help from the association "El Defensor del Paciente" and the entity chaired by

Carmen Flores

has asked the chief prosecutor of Malaga,

Juan Calvo Rubio

, to intervene in this case and to take action on the matter because Daniela has been on the waiting list for surgery for four months.

The Patient Advocate Association brought the facts to the attention of both the manager of the Costa del Sol Hospital -

Antonio Luis Cansino Osuna

- and the Minister of Health of Andalusia -

Catalina García

- but to date Daniella has not had a response.

This attitude, the entity criticizes, is "the result of the indecency and

dehumanization

in which Andalusian healthcare is mired, in which patients with oncological pathologies seem to care little about them."

El Defensor del Paciente also highlights that waiting lists are "the pending issue of the Andalusian health system" and Daniela's case "is a very clear example."

Andalusia presents "a

devastating delay

in surgery, the worst in its history, with 192,561 people covering it with an average of 139 days," they specify.

Oncology patients

The Ministry of Health indicates that the care of cancer patients is their

"absolute priority"

and emphasizes that at the Costa del Sol Hospital "there are no cases of pending preferential tumor surgeries, outside the guaranteed period of 30 days."

In fact, they say, "the average delay for this type of intervention is 25 days."

In the case of Daniela, the Ministry understands that "it is not an emergency tumor pathology, but rather a surgery classified within the 180-day guarantee process" and they insist that her operation "is already scheduled for what is within of the guaranteed period".