O’Connor wins fight with Health Minister
“NOBODY should have to wait for lifesaving surgery,” cancer patient Galy O’Connor (pictured) told The AJN. “It’s not right.”
“NOBODY should have to wait for lifesaving surgery,” cancer patient Galy O’Connor (pictured) told The AJN. “It’s not right.” And thanks to her petition, calling on Health Minister Jillian Skinner to intervene, garnering more than 100,000 signatures, nobody in Sydney will have to wait much longer.
“They are adding another 30 operating days between now and December 25,” O’Connor explained. “Thirty days means 30 people saved, because there won’t be a waiting list. There are currently 25 people on the list, who will be able to get their operation before Christmas. If this hadn’t happened, they would be dead before New Year.”
O’Connor, who is one of the 30 patients who’ll receive the lifesaving surgery, said she feels “a great exuberance” about what has been achieved in just four weeks.
“This is not about me,” she said. “Every hospital visit, I saw the faces of all the patients in my position and they just haunted me and I knew I had to do something.”
But her journey isn’t over, with O’Connor admitting that she is “terrified” about her “hard operation”, which will take 12 hours and be followed by extensive chemotherapy and a long recovery.
“But it’s the only option if I want to live,” she said.
O’Connor is thankful for the outpouring of communal support, and is grateful for everyone who took the time to contribute something to her cause.
“Cancer can happen to anyone, at any time,” she said. “It just wasn’t right, in a country like ours, that I’ve been trying to get an operation for 12 months. I’ve been in horrific pain, day in day out, with hernias, nausea and eating problems, and if not for this operation, I’d be dead within six months.”
O’Connor’s goal now is to recover, and to make sure that nobody ever faces this situation again. “They’ve promised a new centre; I’m sceptical but hopeful that it will be done in time. All I ask is to please make sure that until the new centre is up and running, there are resources to never have a waiting list again.
“I owe a huge thank you to the Jewish community,” she said. “They’ve been amazing and have all my gratitude. What a great community we are.”
YAEL BRENDER
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