Recovering from brain surgery, this woman says it could have been avoided with a faster MRI

A St. John's woman recovering from dangerous brain surgery to partially remove a tumour says the two-year wait for an MRI did her no favours and the surgery could have been avoided entirely if she hadn't had to wait so long.

Alanna McDonald, a chiropractor and mother of three, told CBC News in a recent interview that by the time she had the MRI, the tumour was too big for a simpler procedure.

"If your tumour is less than three centimetres, you can try gamma knife radiation on the tumour and it can be, like, pretty successful. But once your tumour reaches three centimetres, then you have to do a surgery," McDonald said.

"If I had been diagnosed a year earlier, like, maybe things would have gone differently."

After experiencing migraines, blurry vision and facial numbness, McDonald was told in the spring of 2022 that she needed an MRI. It didn't happen until almost two years later, in January of this year.

As the tumour grew, major brain surgery became the only option, and McDonald feared for her life. She's now in recovery ahead of planned radiation treatments to deal with the rest of the tumour, which will likely take her out of province.

WATCH | Alanna McDonald spoke about her two-year wait for an MRI with CBC in March:

She had to wait 2 years for an MRI. Now 16-hour brain surgery is her only treatment option

6 months ago

Duration 2:23

Alanna McDonald had severe migraines. Then her face started to go numb. While she saw her family doctor and a specialist, it was 24 months before she got an MRI which showed a brain tumour that was too big for anything besides surgery. She speaks with the CBCs Darrell Roberts about her frustration.

McDonald called her two-year wait for an MRIa "typical Newfoundland story" when she spoke with CBC News earlier this year. Many others are in similar need of imaging but can't get it without years of waiting, she said.

"I feel like unless you're fighting for our own answers and your own health care, that you're just kind of, like, put to the wayside and not really cared for," she said in March.

"Part of me feels like maybe I didn't fight for myself enough. Like maybe I could have gotten diagnosed earlier if I had have pushed harder. But as a patient, like, that shouldn't be my responsibility."

Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services has not responded to CBC News' request for comment.

System in 'crisis mode': NAPE

In March, then Health Minister Tom Osborne said there were plans to improve MRI access in the province, including a new machine at the new Western Memorial Regional Hospital in Corner Brook.

Jerry Earle, president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees, says staffing will be an issue.

"We were saying this before the pandemic. There was a human resource shortage in these areas that was absolutely necessary to be addressed. It didn't. Now we're at a point [where] we're at a crisis mode here," Earle said in a recent interview.

"We're in that crisis that we forecast five years ago."

Earle said union members have told him that a lack of workers has left them stressed and overworked stress that is transferred to patients.

More equipment is needed, he said, but more also needs to be done to ensure the health system have staff to operate it.

"We better have a human resource plan. These pieces of equipment don't operate themselves."

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