The family of a 30-year-old woman from Saskatoon who died after her ankle surgery was delayed is calling for answers.
Kirsten Hanke fell while retrieving a package off her front step on Aug. 12, breaking her ankle in three places.
Hanke’s husband Kirby Morgan said the couple went to Royal University Hospital after Hanke’s fall. Doctors there attempted to reset her ankle twice, but said surgery was needed.
They put Hanke’s leg in a cast and scheduled her in for surgery three days later on Aug. 15.
Morgan said when they arrived for surgery, no one was expecting them and said staff scrambled to make sense of their appointment.
Throughout the day, Morgan said his wife was ill, throwing up and unable to move because of her injury and a sprain of her other ankle.
“The first two hours of our hospital visit, we were met with nurses that were dumbfounded as to who we even were,” Morgan said.
After eight hours of waiting, Morgan says a doctor entered the room and told them Hanke’s surgery would need to be bumped to another day. The couple reluctantly left the hospital.
On Aug. 19, the day before her surgery, Hanke went to the hospital for a pre-operative CT scan. When she returned home, she collapsed twice in front of her mother before being rushed to hospital and dying from her injury.
“We pulled her off life support shortly after midnight to avoid overlapping with her sister’s wedding anniversary,” Morgan said. “We asked to wait an extra 10 minutes so we could do that.”
Hanke’s family was told Kirsten died from a pulmonary embolism when blood clots moved from her ankle to her lungs,
“I wake up, I’m alone, I go to bed, I’m alone. I don’t have my person anymore,” Morgan said on Friday.
Morgan described Hanke as kind, thoughtful, and said she had the best laugh you could ever have around you.
He said he’s coping with her sudden death by fighting for her and telling her story.
“I think about her every minute of every day and what she would be doing,” Morgan said. “And I know that she would be even angrier than I was, and am now, if that were to happen to me.”
Morgan and Hanke’s parents believe the wife and daughter would be alive today if she got the surgery she needed.
The family wonders why Hanke was sent home and say they’re speaking out in hopes this story can prevent something like this from happening again.
“They probably would have seen signs, where I wouldn’t,” Shawna Hanke, Kirsten’s mother, said. “I didn’t know.”As the Hanke family spoke to reporters, a statement from the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) was sent to media.
The SHA says a priority internal safety review was conducted after Hanke dies to gather initial information into the incident and to inform additional actions. The safety review deemed it to be a critical incident, which triggers a legislates process for review and reporting, including a formal internal review and disclosure to the family.
“The SHA will be engaging the family of this patient to provide an overview and respond to any questions regarding next steps in this formal process,” the statement read.
Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill offered condolences to the Hanke family.
“I expect the SHA to thoroughly examine the circumstances surrounding this incident and take any appropriate action identified through the review process to support the delivery of safe, high-quality care for Saskatchewan patients and families,” he said in a statement.
NDP Leader Carla Beck said it shouldn’t take the media’s involvement or a family going public with their grief and concerns for the SHA to respond to an incident like this.
“Families shouldn’t have to feel like they have to do this on top of everything else,” she said.
“Let’s just get to work and fix the health care system in Saskatchewan.”
