“David Eby needs to explain why this young mother has waited in line, over a year, for a transplant. This is an urgent matter of life and death.”

Kristina Loewen, Conservative MLA for Kelowna Centre, Official Opposition Critic for Social Development and Poverty Reduction

Kelowna, BC: Lyndsay Riccholt, a 42-year-old Kelowna wife and mother of a 13-year-old child, is entering end-stage liver failure after waiting over a year on the BC Transplant list. Lyndsay’s scheduled December 10th transplant surgery was cancelled after her live liver donor sustained injuries in an accident.

“The suffering Lyndsay is enduring is just horrific,” said Kristina Loewen, Conservative MLA for Kelowna Centre and Official Opposition Critic for Social Development and Poverty Reduction. “Her family tells us she’s experiencing acute pain, swelling, cramps and nausea into the wee hours of the morning. Her husband and his mother are now caring for her day and night.”

“David Eby and his NDP health care bureaucracy are refusing to communicate with Lyndsay and her family. She is a fighter, but I am afraid that she is giving up hope.”

Loewen said Lyndsay’s life-threatening condition and the government’s failure to communicate reflect an overall breakdown in the B.C. health care system, and notably Interior Health, where Freedom of Information requests revealed that 222 patients died on the waiting list for surgery last year alone. 38 per cent of those patients were over the benchmark wait-time limit for their procedure when they died.

“Lindsay’s live donor has now recovered from the accident. This transplant can happen now,” said Loewen. “I am sending this message to David Eby today because no matter how exhausted Lyndsay has become, I do not want her to give up. For her sake, for the sake of her teen-aged son who needs her. This is an urgent matter of life and death.”

– 30 –

Media Contact:
Francesca Guetchev, Press Secretary
Francesca.Guetchev@leg.bc.ca
+1 (672) 922-0948