My surgery was cancelled as the taxi to the hospital waited outside
THE taxi ordered to take Joan Myers to hospital for her knee replacement was waiting outside her house when the phone rang.
It was the hospital to say her operation had been cancelled – again.
Mrs Myers, 79, had been waiting since September for the surgery. ‘It’s appalling,’ the grandmother said yesterday.
‘This isn’t just about numbers, this is real people’s lives which are being affected ... My husband and I are keen walkers, we used to love going to the Lake District, but these days I struggle to move around the house.’
Mrs Myers, from Romiley, Greater Manchester, was booked in at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport at 11am yesterday but was called an hour before her appointment to say it had been cancelled. Instead she has been offered a date next week, but is sceptical as to whether things will have improved in time. She said: ‘If things are this bad at the moment, who’s to say it will be any better next Monday?’
The retired primary school teacher, whose husband Arthur, 80, is a retired engineer, said her operation was first cancelled last month due to the surgeon being ill.
‘My husband had one hip replaced on the NHS in 1984 and the other in 2005, and both times it was perfectly straightforward,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know what’s happening.’