Street star: I feared I’d be in a wheelchair for life after hip op
CORONATION Street actress Beverley Callard has told how she feared she would be confined to a wheelchair for life after a routine hip operation left her barely able to walk.
Miss Callard, 63, said the operation was behind her character Liz McDonald’s sudden departure from the soap in March, after 30 years.
She is now suing the hospital which carried out minor keyhole surgery.
After she visited her GP earlier this year – for a niggling pain in her hip – Miss Callard was told she had a minor soft tissue tear. The hospital, in the North West, admitted her as a day patient for keyhole surgery on March 12, the Sunday Mirror reported.
But after the operation, her pain got worse and left her with no control over her body. When she attended hospital to have her stitches removed, she was told her hip had crumbled and needed further surgery.
‘I’ve been gone because it has been the worst six months of my life,’ she said. ‘I have been in the most excruciating pain you can imagine – like teeth grinding inside my hip.
‘A huge part of me thought I’d never be able to return to Coronation Street – that I wouldn’t even walk again. I couldn’t stand. If I moved my right leg in any direction, the pain was indescribable.’
Miss Callard saw another consultant who told her she needed major reconstructive surgery on her hip and that her first procedure should never have been done.
She had a hip replacement on July 20 and returned to her home in Manchester to recuperate, but said she still suffered from the effects of the first surgery.
‘My consultant said I had bone rubbing on bone. He said, in his opinion, I shouldn’t have had the first operation and that they rarely do this operation on women because it’s unsuccessful. He believed it could have been sorted with injections.
‘I’ve got nerve damage, muscle
‘The pain was indescribable’
damage. A lot of muscle has wasted away because I couldn’t walk. Now I’m learning how to walk on both legs again.’
Miss Callard, who has played Liz McDonald since 1989, had been due to leave the soap in July but agreed to stay for another year. Now her return has been put on hold until doctors declare her fit. She added: ‘I had a whole year at Corrie and then a year of plans after that.
‘Then it all fell by the wayside because of this. There have been days when I’ve asked myself,“How will I earn any money?”. I feel like I was fobbed off and ignored.
‘I’m most definitely taking legal action. I am fighting for my future but also for what is right and to make sure this never happens to anyone else.
‘I had what I thought was a routine operation but I would never have had it if I had known what the terrible consequences would be. I will do this. I shouldn’t have to, but I will.’