Winnipeg woman living with ‘so much pain’ waiting for yet another elbow surgery

There are days when Cindy Myskiw thinks she may be better off without her arm altogether.

The Winnipeg woman has been living in pain for years – temporarily abated in the immediate aftermath of more than half a dozen surgeries.

Now she’s waiting for a replacement part for her latest elbow surgery to arrive. She describes her pain as reaching level 100 on a scale from one to 10.

“There’s times I just wanna cut my arm off because there’s just so much pain,” Myskiw said.

“Even just to hold something, it’s like, that causes pain. Sitting still causes pain because it’s shifting constantly in there. It’s stupid. Absolutely stupid.”

Myskiw’s issues with her elbow date back to 2001 – when she first broke it – and spans seven surgeries over more than two decades to repair the damage.

It all began on Nov. 19, 2001, when Myskiw tripped over a wheelbarrow handle and broke her elbow while she was living in the RM of Alexander.

“The moment of impact, I knew I broke it,” she recalled. “It was just instantaneous pain.”

She went to Pine Falls Hospital for a splint and was transferred to Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre, where she waited two days on a gurney in the hallway before having her first surgery.

When her staples were removed, she found the surgeon had sewed the bone, leaving her in excruciating pain with her arm stuck in a right angle and unable to rotate her hand.

A second surgery in May 2002 did not improve her pain level or range of movement. The next surgery, in February 2003, left her with no pain and a range of motion that was near-to-normal. It was supposed to give her a decade of relief.

But she began to hear crunching sounds in her elbow some five years later, and ultimately underwent three more surgeries between 2009 and 2014.

The seventh and final surgery – to date – took place in August 2023, when she had her elbow replaced with a plastic part ordered from Italy, after she waited seven months for the part to arrive.

“Health Canada had to approve it all,” she said. “And then once Health Canada approved that I needed this piece, Manitoba Health had to approve it. So it was this whole protocol of getting it approved for me to get this part to be put back together.”

A year later – this past August – Myskiw was simply putting lotion on her face when she heard a loud snap.

“And I’m just like, standing in front of the mirror going, uh oh, that didn’t sound good,” she recalled.

The snap was her metal elbow breaking.

A first X-ray at Concordia Hospital revealed nothing wrong. A second X-ray confirmed Myskiw’s suspicions.

“He goes, ‘come and see this.’ In the X-ray, there’s a screw loose behind the base of the elbow and he goes, ‘there’s the reason why you’re in pain. We need to order this piece again that we ordered last year and get it replaced again.’”

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A recent X-ray has revealed the elbow piece has completely separated from her arm. The surgeon’s office initially refused to cast her arm, and so did the hospital. The surgeon eventually agreed to cast it.

The Winnipeg woman has now been waiting for the replacement part for five months, and says she’s in the most pain she’s ever been in.

Myskiw is calling for expedited transport for parts needed for surgery.

“These parts are taking longer to replace in our human bodies than it does to order a part for a car or a computer. How is that possible? How is that humane?”

Minister of Health Uzoma Asagwara said Wednesday in an email statement their office is in contact with Myskiw to ensure she gets the care she needs.

Myskiw confirmed with CityNews the minister’s office reached out to her in the afternoon. In the meantime, Mykiw has no choice but to suffer and wait.

“It’s a battle, 100 per cent mentally, physically and emotionally,” she said.