I've been waiting nearly 5 years for surgery to correct an issue that has been limiting my mobility and causing me a lot of social anxiety. If you know me IRL, you know what I'm talking about because you can't have missed it.

Initially, I explored private treatment in the UK. I got myself into this mess and I didn't feel comfortable asking the NHS to get me out of it. However, Nuffield and Spire didn't want to take it on, and Nuffield referred me back to the NHS.

Since then, I have languished on waiting lists at three different NHS hospitals, following a pattern of waiting to see a consultant, getting added to a waiting list, waiting for 18-24 months, then being told that there's no realistic prospect of receiving treatment and being referred to a hospital in a different NHS CCG and the cycle repeating.

This November will mark the 5 year aniversary of my initial referral. I don't think I can face another 5 years of this only to end up in the same position that I am now. So I have made a plan.

I am going to spend the next 5 years working through all my remaining options. PALS to try get somewhere with the current CCG, complaining to the CCG and the ombudsman, and exploring treatment options abroad. DIY is out of the question.

And then, if things haven't changed by the 10th anniversary of my initial referral, I'll use the final cure-all and I won't need treatment any more.

I realise I put "politics" in the CW and I haven't explained how that relates to my situation.

The UK has two parallel health systems: the National Health Service (NHS) and private healthcare.

The theory is that private healthcare gives those with the means to pay greater choice and shorter waiting times to receive the same treatments. In reality, the private healthcare providers are only interested in providing treatment that will make them a tidy profit. If you've got something odd wrong with you, they can't or won't help, and send you to the NHS.

The NHS also fixes all the fuck-ups by private healthcare. Surgical revisions, complications, that kind of stuff. It's the privatise profit, socialise risk model in action.

The tories believe that the invisible hand of the market will shape private healthcare into a working system, if only the NHS wasn't there to pick up the pieces, but they can't just disband it, so they have been deliberatley underfunding it, to the point that it can barely function and frequently fails patients.

This is supposed to create more space for private healthcare to fill the gaps, but the reality is that private healthcare in the UK is not interested in filling the gaps. Patients who are a risk to their bottom line, they do not want. They only want the standard, predictable stuff that has known risk and profit, and if those procedures go wrong, they want an NHS they can dump the consequences onto.

So this is how we've got into a situation where the NHS is, essentially, broken, and there aren't any alternatives for many patients.

@tryst Really hope you can get this sorted somewhere hun.

@renbymon @tryst Me too. And reading between the lines, a life without El Catto here is not one I would like to imagine.

@philpem @renbymon Me three. It is the last and final option; however, if I get to 10 years without treatment, I think it's safe to assume at that point that I will not be receiving treatment at all.