HALIFAX -- You can get a haircut in Nova Scotia now and eat in a restaurant, but women due for their regular screening mammogram will still have to wait.
The provincial breast cancer screening program is still on pause because of the pandemic.
Breast cancer survivor Leslie Keevil knows what's it's like to wait for the results of a mammogram. She also knows that some women in Nova Scotia, who are due for their regular screening and can't get an appointment because of the pandemic, are bound to be worried.
"If it's time and you go every two years, and you can't rebook it, it makes you nervous to say, 'Well, when can I call back to book it?'" Keevil said.
Keevil was relieved to get her own follow-up mammogram ordered by her doctor just before the pandemic hit.
Based on her own experience, she urges women who can't get their regular screening now to do breast self-exams.
"Doing your self-exams, if there is something that you're concerned about, then speak to your family doctor," Keevil said.
It was mid-March when provincial breast cancer screening programs throughout the Maritimes were first put on hold due to COVID-19.
Prince Edward Island resumed its program last Monday.
In New Brunswick, the plan is to gradually start offering screening mammograms sometime this month.
In Nova Scotia, the health-care system has been reintroducing some services and is triaging referrals for mammograms for urgent and high-risk patients.
Spaces are opening up for appointments for other elective diagnostic imaging in Nova Scotia – in a system operating at 25 per cent capacity.
A spokesperson for the Nova Scotia Breast Screening Program says it's too early to know when regular breast screening mammograms for women without symptoms will resume.
"The health-care system is making the best decisions that it can," said Kelly Cull, the Atlantic director of the Canadian Cancer Society.
Cull says, while the system has taken care of cancer patients with urgent and critical needs during the pandemic, the fallout from delayed cancer screenings and other diagnostics may yet to be felt.
"In the months and probably years to come, we're probably going to get a sense of what that collateral damage looks like," Cull said. "(How) these months of lower service and lower treatments (are) going to impact individual Canadians' lives."
With wait times for regular screening mammograms already up to 19 weeks in some parts of the Maritimes, the women waiting to find out when they can even book an appointment hope it won't be too much longer.
