Time is running out for Jacqui Scott, who is still trying to raise $80,000 for crucial surgery in just six weeks.
Ms Scott was fitted with two surgical meshes after an attack and rape at her home in 2005, but 12 months later began to notice debilitating pain.
No one in New Zealand was qualified to extract the meshes and Ms Scott is trying to raise $138,000 for surgery in the United States, tentatively arranged for August. So far she has raised more than $55,000.
She said she wasn't part of the online support group Mesh Down Under, whose petition calling for the Government to open an urgent inquiry was read out in a Health Select Committee last week.
Her health has worsened since she last spoke to Hawke's Bay Today. "My situation has got a lot worse ... The pain has increased. I keep passing out."
As ACC did not cover treatment outside New Zealand, Ms Scott was trying to raise the funds for the crucial surgery on the Givealittle website. She had failed to raise the required funds for a tentative booking on March 5 and would need to wait five more months before the surgeon was able to operate again.
"I feel like I've been condemned to death. I've got six weeks ... Time is running out for me."
ACC had declined Ms Scott's requests to meet with them, she said. "ACC are telling the media they're doing things for me, but they're not."
ACC had said the American surgeon, with whom she hoped to undergo treatment, was ready to conduct pre-operation testing on her, but her personal correspondence with the surgeon had revealed otherwise, she said.
Online fundraising was her only hope.
"It's the only way I'm really going to get the mesh removed. If they [ACC] were taking it seriously they would have done something by now."
Ms Scott was hugely appreciative of the online donations she had received, many of them anonymous. "It's wonderful. It hasn't just come from New Zealand. I speak to people all over the world." The parliamentary health select committee last week read a written submission calling for the Government to open an urgent inquiry into the use of surgical mesh in New Zealand. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also seeking some mesh implants to be reclassified as being "high risk".
The Herald on Sunday revealed yesterday the case of South Island man Geoffrey Mehrtens, 54, whose death in 2010 could be the first reported death linked to mesh.
To donate, visit http://www.givealittle.co.nz/cause/jacqui