FRANCES Luck thought her 21-month wait for surgery was finally over as she walked towards an operating theatre at York Hospital last Tuesday.

The 24-year-old York woman says she was gowned up and psyched up, nervous but prepared for the laparoscopy procedure, which would tackle her painful and worsening condition endometriosis.

But then a woman stopped her and asked her to go back into a bay room and, after a 45-minute wait, she was asked to go into a different room and then told the operation was being cancelled - because there was no bed available for her when she came round.

“I was inconsolable,” said Frances, of South Bank, who works in customer services. “I just broke down. I couldn’t stop crying. I was sobbing so much I couldn’t even speak for about an hour.”

Frances is just the latest patient to fall victim to postponed operations at the hospital as it treats a record number of patients with Covid - the number rising to 253 by yesterday.

Frances said that back in the summer of 2020, she was told she would undergo her procedure within eight to 16 weeks, but she was given no date and her condition gradually worsened.

She said that last summer, the op was being treated as an emergency but she still didn’t get a date set until this January.

She then needed antibiotics for a chest infection and the procedure had to be cancelled, and she was give the fresh date of last Tuesday, March 15.

“I booked time off work and went into isolation at the weekend, did my Covid test, had my bloods taken and came in on Tuesday,” she said.

“I was nervous because it was surgery but I’d psyched myself up. I had my pre-op and was walking to the theatre when a woman stopped me and asked me to go into a side room.

“I didn’t think anything of it at first but then half an hour later she came back in and said it couldn’t go ahead because there would be no bed available for me afterwards.

“My mum came in and said it was disgusting that they could do that to me after 21 months of being in pain.

“She couldn’t understand how they didn’t know before I went through all that that there wouldn’t be a bed available.”

Frances said she had since been told that she could now be booked in to have the procedure on April 12, but there could be no guarantee it could go ahead then, and she feared she might go through the same emotional trauma all over again.

“I don’t want it to happen to me again but I don’t want it to happen to anyone else either,” she said.

 

YORK and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said yesterday that it currently had 254 Covid positive patients in its hospitals.
A spokeswoman said this was higher than its last recorded peak in January 2021, which was at the height of the Alpha variant wave.
She said this high number of Covid positive patients, along with high emergency admissions, continued to put significant pressure on the hospitals’ bed base and staffing resource.
“In response, we have unfortunately had to postpone some elective procedures at York Hospital, although we are continuing to prioritise those patients with the greatest clinical need, such as emergency, urgent and cancer patients,” she said.
“Any cancellation of a scheduled operation is always a matter of regret, whatever the reason, and we are sorry for the inconvenience and distress that this causes for patients.
“We do appreciate the lengths people go to when they make arrangements to come into hospital and we don’t take these decisions lightly,” she added.