Alberta Woman Forced To Carry Dead Fetus For A Week

An Alberta woman is blaming a backlogged health care system for a heartbreaking health crisis she recently had to endure.

Anita Hellum of Hinton, Alta. miscarried at 18 weeks and was forced to carry the dead fetus in her womb for a week because she had to wait for doctors in Edmonton to remove it. She says the awful situation has left her emotionally scarred.

On Oct. 3 Hellum’s doctor told her that her child had no heartbeat and because a pre-existing medical condition risked rupturing her uterus if her body miscarried on its own, her doctor referred her to Royal Alexandra hospital to have the child removed.

Hellum’s doctor said she had to wait an agonizing week to have the baby removed because it was Thanksgiving weekend and there were other women ahead of her. Hellum wonders why she had to suffer so long in one of the richest provinces in the country.

“It’s even more horrendous for a woman to spend an entire week knowing she has something precious dead inside her,” Psychologist Pam Algar of Edmonton’s Centre for Family and Health Psychology said.

Steve Buick, a spokesman for Capital Health, an integrated health network in Alberta, said waiting a week to have this procedure was not “abnormal” and wasn’t due to growing wait times.

Women are often counselled to spend a few days preparing for the emotional trauma of the procedure, he added.

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