"Think about how your patients are feeling"

I arrived for my operation at 7.30am (having been moved from the previous week by DRH) and was prepped fairly quickly. When a surgeon came round he told me my surgeon was off sick and he had been called in to cover his list. I was scheduled for morning surgery and I waited... and waited and at 11am my husband asked where I was on the list to be told I had been moved to the afternoon. I was not told until he asked that I could have a bit of water until 12. I watched everyone else on the morning list go down and when asked again was told it would br 3pm. I was feeling quite dizzy as I had eaten nothing sine the previous evening and was told, quite abruptly, to lie on the bed - my blood pressure had raised to high levels. I waited some more and watched the afternoon list start to go down (who had all had breakfast) until eventually they told me, at 3.10pm, that I was not going to be operated on as the surgeon had a complication with one of the patients. By this point I was really stressed and feeling quite unwell.

I had told the anaesthetist how nervous I was and the long delay really stressed me - as a teacher my school had to arrange supply cover for me (as did my husbands school so he could bring me) and whilst I understand sickness will cause operations to be cancelled at short notice, to leave me waiting for 71/2 hours with mounting anxiety was horrible. The nursing staff barely spoke to me and whenever they were asked what was happening they just said they didn't know or the doctors made the decisions - there was no regard for how I was feeling.

The nursing staff need to think about the patients in their care - there was a complete lack of information provided and if my husband hadn't asked questions we would have been told nothing. All in all very poor and has left me really anxious about the whole procedure now.