"cancelled operation at James Cook"

My wife has severe rheumatoid arthritis, she was due to have a knee replacement on at the beginning of December. She had agreed to this operation as her condition in her legs had progressively worsened and her consultants had encoraged her to have the operation over some time.

My wife had mentaly brought herself to agree to the operation (her reluctance was due to a bad experience with a operation on her wrist some years ago) which in our opinion made her condition throughout her body worse.

Last week my wife received a telephone call from the hospital asking her if she would be prepared to have the operation at the beginning of this week.

She agreed and arrangements were made for her to be addmitted at 11am that day.

4pm of the day before she was due to have her operation my wife received a further call from the hospital telling her that the operation 'would most likely' be cancelled but to still prepare as if she was to be addmitted and the hospital would call her the next day to confirm if the operation was off or not.

The next morning no call was received, my wife had not eaten anything since midnight, she had drunk the solution given to her by the hospital and was prepared for this non existant operation.

We called the hospital and with some difficulty eventually spoke to someone who confirmed the operation was off.