A Victorian woman is pleading for help after waiting 21 months for a breast reconstruction following a cancer diagnosis.
Melanie Kuyl, 42, a mother from Eynesbury in Victoria, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in August 2020 in the middle of the state’s tough COVID-19 lockdowns.
She tells 9News she elected not to have reconstructive surgery immediately after needing a lumpectomy, lymph node clearance and a double mastectomy.
Now, Kuyl wants to feel “normal” again – but it will cost her $20,000 and could take years.
“I was weak from chemo and my breast surgeon said to me, ‘Let’s just get them off first’, because of the risk of the cancer coming back,” Kuyl tells 9News.
“Then he said, when you’ve gotten through all this, we can get them back on.”
Getting her breasts “back on” has proved to be a long and arduous journey.
She’s been on the waiting list for reconstructive surgery since 2022 and there’s no end in sight.
“It just doesn’t look like it’s going to get done,” she says.
Kuyl, who is listed as a ‘category three’ patient who needs treatment within 12 months, says the surgery has been described as “medically necessary” by her surgeon.
Despite this, a backlog of surgeries, which were delayed due to the pandemic has meant Kuyl has been on the public waiting list for close to two years.
She is seeking the surgery as a private patient, however, her out-of-pocket payment has been quoted as $20,000, which includes an expected $8000 bill from an anesthetist, as the operation will take eight hours.
Kuyl can’t afford this and has started an online fundraiser to ask for donations so she can cobble together enough to pay for the surgery in November 2024, if it goes ahead.
Taking money out of her superannuation account is an option, but Kuyl is not willing to part with $20,000 of super cash, which is taxed at a high rate.
“That’s potentially going to cost me and my family about $100,000 when we retire,” she says.
“That takes money away from my family, my family’s already been impacted by my cancer. I don’t want our future and my girls’ future to be impacted as well.”
Kuyl also says “medically necessary” doesn’t begin to describe the emotional and psychological pain she’s suffered since having her double mastectomy.
“I’m not whole,” she explains. “Every time I look in the mirror, I see my scars and it’s such a constant re-traumatic experience.
“I’ve got young daughters, aged eight and five, and they keep saying, ‘Mummy, when are you going to get your boobies back? When are you going to get back to normal?’
“I just want to go back to seeing who I was before it all.”
Kuyl will also need a hysterectomy and oophorectomy in the future because she has a BRCA2 gene.
In a statement to 9News, the Department of Health Victoria said: “We know waiting for planned surgery can be a challenging and frustrating experience for patients.
“That’s why over the past two years the Victorian Government has reformed the delivery of surgery, opening 10 rapid access hubs, creating two public surgical centres and establishing patient support units – streamlining services and freeing up theatres and ward capacity at our busiest hospitals.”
It said the waitlist had dropped 33.6 per cent since 2022.
