Her son's heart surgery has been cancelled twice. It's happening all over Canada

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When her nine-year-old son's heart surgery was recently cancelled for the second time in as many months, Rachael Armstrong was left angry, frustrated and "visibly shaking."

"My reaction was not very good … my stress was through the roof," said Armstrong from Kamloops, B.C. Her son Jackson Anderson has been waiting for surgery at B.C. Children's Hospital since May.

"As a parent, it's scary to think that your child's medical care might be getting pushed back and pushed back," she told The Current's Matt Galloway.

Jackson was born with holes in his heart, a condition for which he has already had 10 surgeries. Last spring, doctors said he would need to have his aorta replaced with a mechanical valve, but that surgery was postponed in both October and November because there was not adequate staffing to oversee his recovery in ICU.

The delays extend the anxiety that Armstrong has felt since the day she learned he would need surgery.

"Until he's in that [operating room] and has come out, you kind of have that thought in the back of your mind … what's going to happen to him in there? Is he going to come out OK?" she said.

Delays to pediatric surgeries are being reported across the country, as hospital staff are redeployed to tackle a so-called tripledemic surge of flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Beds in ICUs are also needed for the children sickest with these viruses.

Jackson's condition is stable, but an obstruction in his aorta is expected to only get worse until the surgery happens. Armstrong thinks there's a good chance their next appointment, in December, might also be cancelled. But she understands that hospitals are under a lot of pressure to care for acute cases.

"There are children out there that need that space, need that care. So we just need to accept that and know that they probably need it a little bit more than we do," she said.

The Current contacted the B.C. Children's Hospital for comment, but did not hear back. 

Last week the Vancouver hospital activated emergency overflow measures to manage a higher-than-usual volume of patients. In Calgary, Alberta Children's Hospital announced plans Tuesday to redeploy staff and postpone a number of surgeries. Some surgeries at the IWK Health Centre in Nova Scotia have been cancelled, and health officials have urged people to keep vaccinations up to date, stay home when sick, and wear masks to combat a spike in respiratory illnesses among young children in that province.

At Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, Dr. Steven Schwartz says they're seeing a similar spike, with some of the sickest children struggling to breathe by the time they come to hospital. 

"I have never seen anything like this in terms of just the vast numbers of patients. And it's not just here. It's across the province. It's across the country. It's across North America," said Schwartz, chief of the department of critical care medicine at the hospital, known as SickKids.