Dying mum Selina Gilfedder, 38, has been given new hope. Photo / Dean Purcell
Dying mum Selina Gilfedder, 38, has been given new hope. Photo / Dean Purcell
ACC says it will fast-track dying mum Selina Gilfedder's claim and have committed to a one-month deadline.
This comes just days after the Herald exposed the 38-year-old's struggle against ACC, which requested she sign off on a six-month extension for them to make a decision on her treatment injury claim.
The mum-of-four whose cancer was not diagnosed for almost two years feared she would not be alive by then, saying she felt "bullied into accepting that time-frame".
Now, Gilfedder says she has been given hope that she will live long enough to see the decision and with any luck get the justice she feels she's entitled to.
Emails reviewed by the Herald revealed Gilfedder being told on Thursday that her claim "fitted the criteria to be managed as a rapidly deteriorating claim".
This means her claim could be fast-tracked by getting an ACC assessor to work out the amount she could be entitled, if accepted, while external medical experts made their opinions on the claim as part of the decision-making process.
ACC also agreed to reduce the extension period to one month instead of six, which including the three months they had already had, is the legal maximum.
Gilfedder said she wasn't told fast-tracking her claim or negotiating on the deadline was even an option until after her story was published.
"I was shocked they were willing to negotiate because they never told me any of this - it's a complete turnaround."
ACC maintains it always planned to fast-track her claim, as it does for all cases when it knows the client has a terminal diagnosis.
An ACC spokesman said there were still some aspects of the claim that needed clarifying such as the length of the delay.
"The implication of a two-year delay in diagnosis could potentially make a significant difference to a claim where the injury is disease progression of an underlying cancer.
"We have now requested earlier medical notes from the GP (which we have yet to receive), which will then go to the external specialist considering the medical information already sent," he said.
Selina Gilfedder with her husband Wayne and two sons Luke, 8, and Beau, 4. Photo / Dean Purcell
In response to the reduction of the extension time, the spokesman said: "We will accept any extension a client is prepared to approve.
"However, if the external specialists' reports are not completed by the extended date, we will still have to make a decision based on the information we hold if Selina is not prepared to extend the time again," he said.
If ACC finds her disease had progressed due to lack of treatment and she has died by the time a decision is made, she will miss out on $130,000 of compensation - not including the money her family will be given.
Gilfedder's story dates back to January 2017 when she first visited her doctor feeling unwell.
Between then and October last year, she went to her GP at least seven times complaining she had been bleeding from her bottom and experiencing severe abdominal pain.
By October last year, she had lost 6kg and was still complaining of the same symptoms. She was given stronger pain relief and later, when she returned in "crippling pain", a higher dosage.
"I was like a walking drug supply living off three doses of Tramadol a day," Gilfedder said.
On New Years' Eve she was rushed to hospital and had emergency surgery where a large cancerous mass was removed from her bowel. Doctors said it was too advanced to treat and Gilfedder was given about a year to live.
Bowel Cancer NZ spokeswoman Mary Bradley said stories like Gilfedder's are happening far too often and GPs needed to be much more thorough.
"It's simply not good enough that this keeps happening."
Bradley said patients needed to be given all the options, GPs needed to connect the dots better and everyone needed to be aware bowel cancer was not an old person's disease.
