Sevan Hajinian is the kind of patient orthopaedic surgeons dread. A series of surgeries on her spine has left the mother of two with what's called "failed back syndrome" – chronic, intense pain from damaged nerves and scar tissue. Her back problems are so complicated, no surgeon in Ontario is willing to operate again, to try to bring her relief.

But a highly experienced orthopaedic surgeon in New York, Dr. Jean-Pierre Farcy, thinks he can help. He's the only surgeon Hajinian has met in four years of looking who has the expertise and the willingness to handle her case.

Yet OHIP, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, is refusing to pay for the surgery and out-of-country expenses, which would cost an estimated US$200,000.

Meanwhile, Hajinian, 50 years old and a mother of two, lives in constant pain. For close to four years, she's survived on daily doses of morphine, six to eight Percocets a day, and has trouble performing even the simplest of tasks.

Now, Hajinian's case has taken on a new urgency: she's just learned that while Dr. Farcy is willing to perform her surgery at any time, he's semi-retiring on May 1. After that date, he will no longer do surgeries, only patient consultations.

Hajinian has been told her deadline to be operated on is mid-April. But with her finances exhausted after paying $300,000 out of pocket for surgeries in Germany five years ago, Hajinian can't afford the surgery.

With her last hope slipping away, Hajinian is at the end of her rope, frustrated, depressed and angry.

"I'm really upset with our health care system," Hajinian tells CTVNews.ca by phone from her home in Scarborough, Ont..

"We've been living here in Canada for 30 years, working and paying our taxes, we're honest people. And then, when we need the services, we cannot get it."

Hajinian has battled with the province's health insurer for close to four years, even appealing to the Ontario Health Services Appeal and Review Board. They argue that Hajinian's surgery isn't urgent and that she hasn't consulted enough doctors in Ontario. But she says she's already seen five orthopedic surgeons, two neurologists, and one neurosurgeon. No one is willing and able to help her.

"We have already consulted five; how many more do we have to consult?" Hajinian wonders.

As for the urgency of her case, Hajinian can tell you she can't wait much longer.

She can neither stand, sit, nor lie down in the same position for more than a few minutes without pain. She's recently developed a limp and numbness along her right side.

Dr. Farcy himself testified to the Appeal and Review Board that without surgery, Hajinian "could end up with paraplegia, which, as a person of her age, is catastrophic."

The powerful painkillers she uses are also taking their toll. Hajinian says she lives with chronic constipation and is already developing symptoms of liver and kidney failure. Not surprisingly, she also struggles with depression.

She's trying to avoid getting the wheelchair that would make getting around a little easier, because she worries it would embarrass her daughters, aged 14 and 17.

"I don't want to go into a wheelchair, because once I go onto the wheelchair, that's it; that's the end of it," she says.

The 50-year-old is not able to work and her husband, a welder, is the sole breadwinner. But she worries about him too.

"He has a stressful job and on top of it, he had a minor stroke last summer. Now, I'm so worried about our finances. If he has another stroke, what will happen to us?" she wonders.

Hajinian's back problems began decades ago, when she had a metal rod placed in her back to help relieve her scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. She then underwent a spinal fusion surgery in Toronto in 1999 that not only did not help, it damaged her sciatic nerve, leaving her in more pain than ever.

In 2006, she'd had enough and decided she would see a specialist in Germany. During one of the procedures there, she developed a life-threatening pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the lung), and a cerebrospinal fluid leak.

To pay the $300,000 bill for the German procedures, Hajinian's family re-mortgaged their home, and maxed out their lines of credit.

Then, in mid-2008, she started developing a new pain in her back, which she says is related but completely new.

Hajinian would like to just pay for the New York surgery herself again, but her family's finances are exhausted. So, with the mid-April deadline looming, Hajinian has turned to fundraising.

Her church, the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church in Scarborough, has set up a trust account and appealed to members for help. Together, they've raised close to $40,000. But with just weeks left, Hajinian knows that's nowhere near enough.

Hajinian says she hates having to ask friends and strangers for help, but she doesn't know what else to do.

"If there was any way we could afford it, we would pay it. Do you know how embarrassing it is for me to go around begging for money?" she says.

The ironic thing, says Hajinian, is that if she can't get the surgery that OHIP refuses to pay for, she may end up costing the Ontario health care system more in the long run, given her worsening condition.

"If I am not treated in New York, I will certainly become bed-ridden, and a permanent medical burden on our health system and on Ontario taxpayers," Hajinian wrote to Premier Dalton McGuinty's office last June, in a last-ditch bid for help.

She received no reply.

Donations can be sent to:

Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church Humanitarian Fund for Sevan Hajinian
920 Progress Ave.
Scarborough, Ont.
M1G 3T5

Or, contact Holy Trinity Armenian church office at 416-431-3001 Ext. 222 to make a donation by credit card or cheque.

(A tax receipt can be issued.)

Follow Angela Mulholland on Twitter: @angemulholland