Bruce Gordon and his wife Mabel are spending some time in Puerto Vallarta this winter, but the visit will be anything but a vacation for the Port Alberni couple.
Gordon has undergone his first of two joint replacements in a Mexican hospital. He will be returning home with a scar from 36 staples—and a brand new knee. It’s something he says he would still be waiting for if he had stayed in Canada.
“Everything went well, but boy is it painful at the moment,” Gordon said the day he returned from hospital to the home the couple is renting while he recuperates.
When Gordon turned 61 he was diagnosed with osteoarthritis in his joints. An entertainer in the cruise industry, pain forced him to leave his job. He waited two and a half years to have his right hip replaced in 2017. He was given hydromorphone for pain for two years prior to the surgery and said coming off the narcotic analgesics was horrible.
In March 2022 there were more than 8,000 people in B.C. waiting for joint replacement surgeries, according to provincial statistics. Those numbers were supposed to go down as the number of surgeries returned to pre-coronavirus pandemic levels. The provincial government categorizes wait times in two ways: wait to see a surgeon and wait for surgery (which starts when a surgery booking form is received by a health authority).
As of Oct. 31, 2023 there were more than 9,100 people waiting for knee replacements in B.C., including 1,664 in Island Health. People were waiting up to 47 weeks to have their surgery on Vancouver Island, and more than 59 weeks on average around the province.
The wait times for hip replacement surgery on Vancouver Island were only slightly shorter: 45 weeks. As of Oct. 31, 2023 there were 1,109 people on a waiting list for hip surgery.
Gordon said wait times don’t factor in the mental health aspect of people who are living with pain and restricted movement every day.
“They don’t factor in people that are dealing with pain 24 hours a day. I feel sometimes like my body is being beaten with an axe handle,” he said. “Depression and anxiety, there’s plenty of it out there…the government doesn’t understand that these waits will exacerbate other symptoms.”
When in 2018 Gordon began feeling pain in his left knee and hip after compensating for the pain in his right hip for so long, he knew he could not go through a long wait again. When he saw an interview on television with a woman who waited for three years for a joint replacement before going to another country for her surgery, he knew what he wanted to do. He started researching medical tourism and decided on Mexico.
“When I was working in the cruise industry as an entertainer I would have to go for physicals. They (employer) would send me to a clinic in either Puerto Vallarta or Cozumel, Mexico. Their clinics are very clean and they have a good reputation for surgeries.”
Once he is cleared to return home Gordon will continue healing in Port Alberni. He plans to return to Puerto Vallarta in November for his second joint replacement, this time his left hip.
“I want my life back,” he said.
Gordon had to leave the cruise industry while he was waiting for his first joint replacement. The long wait burned him out and he could not return.
“Because I had to wait so long I went through all my RRSPs,” he said. He and Mabel moved from the Lower Mainland to Port Alberni for the lower cost of living, and a small inheritance is helping pay for his surgeries.
Gordon said he is sharing his story in the hopes it will help someone else, much like the television interview he saw helped him. “I’m not looking for anybody to give me money for my surgery. I don’t have a GoFundMe (fundraiser). But what about the people who can’t afford to have it?”