July 21st 2024.
Chantelle Mooney, a 41-year-old woman, was eagerly awaiting her scheduled surgery for a four-centimeter brain tumor at Royal Preston Hospital in Lancashire. The surgery, known as craniotomy, was planned for Friday, but unfortunately, it had to be postponed for a week due to a massive IT outage that affected millions of devices worldwide.
Chantelle has been bravely battling cancer since February 2022 when she was diagnosed with stage 4B terminal cervical cancer that had also spread to her lungs. In a recent check-up, a mass was found in her brain, which prompted her doctors to schedule an emergency surgery to remove it. After waiting for weeks, her appointment was finally set for Thursday, but it was later pushed back to Friday.
As Chantelle arrived at the hospital on Friday morning, she learned about the Microsoft outage on the news while waiting in the lobby to be called into the operating theater. Soon after, her surgeon came out to explain that some of the hospital's equipment relied on the same software that was affected by the outage. Therefore, they had no choice but to postpone her surgery once again.
Chantelle's surgery has now been rescheduled for the following Friday. She expressed her disappointment, saying, "The brain tumor was only found three weeks ago, and it needs to be removed as an emergency." Her doctors waited until 1:30 PM to see if the tech issue could be resolved, but unfortunately, it was not possible. They could not take the risk of another outage in the middle of the procedure, which can take several hours.
Chantelle understood the gravity of the situation and said, "A lot of the tools and scans use Microsoft, and they even use it for emergency medication." She added, "They said they can't proceed with the surgery until the software comes back up." Although she was initially upset about the delay, she soon realized that her safety was the top priority. "If the software went down again during the surgery, it would put my life at risk," she explained.
The hospital staff did everything they could to avoid canceling Chantelle's surgery, but ultimately, they had to put her safety above all else. "They really didn't want to cancel the surgery because of how serious it is," Chantelle said. "But at the end of the day, my safety comes first." Even though a recovery tool was launched by the tech company, experts warn that it could take weeks for some businesses to fully recover from the Crowdstrike outage. Microsoft has reported that a staggering 8.5 million devices were affected, making it one of the worst cyber incidents in history.
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