First of all, I should say that there are occasions when the National Health has actually treated me to my satisfaction. I've had three major accidents in my life, requiring emergency treatment/operations and I survived them all and can still walk, so in that respect I do owe them a lot. HOWEVER, having said that, when it comes to treatment of my weight problem, apart from one or two rare instances, I can't say that I have had sympathetic treatment at all since I was 18!

The fact is that in the case of many doctors in this country, if you are overweight every single ailment you complain about, is blamed on your weight. Like it or not, prejudice is rife against overweight people in the medical profession. I have been to my doctor in dire pain with my back only to be told, in front of my husband, that I was complaining to 'try and get out of the housework'! Needless to say, my faith in my then family doctor was destroyed at that point.

However, due to his attitude and NEEDING MORE IN THE WAY OF CARE, I actually saw a dietary specialist who examined my food intake and declared that my problems stemmed not from what I ate but how. Since I was 16 I had never eaten breakfast. I do not 'snack' between meals either. So I habitually only ate for the first time at lunchtime - and in fact in recent years I would often miss lunch too, if I was busy on the computer. This meant that I often wasn't eating until the evening and then had a larger, 2-course meal, followed by an inactive evening. She put me onto a regime where I had to eat MORE often, starting with breakfast. Apart from that I hardly changed my diet AT ALL. Nothing happened for a month and then I started to lose weight. Eventually however, my body hit a 'plateau' and we had to start dropping the calories. Having lost one stone, I was then put on Xenical - which stops the body absorbing fat. It took me THREE YEARS but I lost 6 stone. In all the time that I lost the weight, my doctor never ONCE congratulated me on my effort or made a single move to find out whether this loss had affected the pain I had been in for so long (it HADN'T).

Xenical undoubtedly works although it does have some very unpleasant effects that I will spare you.... but they also have a support line that the nurse recommended me to try when I hit the 'plateau' and stop losing weight. This I did. I was sent lots of literature - most of which I had read a million times elsewhere - and they started regular phone calls to ask how I was doing. This would have been a valuable support if in fact they had listened to a word I said. Instead it was perfectly obvious that they had a script that they stuck to and were not listening to individuals at ALL. I explained that I was over 60, that I could not stand without severe PAIN, and that both my shoulders were shot to the point where I couldn't even raise my arms. So what do they do? They recommend I TAKE MORE EXERCISE. Exactly HOW do you exercise when you cannot stand, let alone walk or jump around and you can't lift your arms? After three of these phone calls I seemed to get this message over to one of their staff who apologised and said that she would try to send some more helpful items. What did I receive? A PEDOMETER. I gave up on them at that point.

However - I got on extremely well with the dietary nurse however and when we came to move house, I asked her if I could remain as an out-of-area patient. She went to ask my doctor if that was possible as she said that she didn't want me to stop losing weight and wanted to keep me as a patient. She returned and said yes, the doctor had agreed. One month later, she left the practice! I carried on with her replacement who, frankly, didn't seem to care one way or another how I felt. When I moved house, I went into the surgery to give them my new house details only to be told that they knew nothing about my being accepted as an out-of-area patient. They went to ask my doctor who denied knowing anything about it! I was, to say the least, extremely upset by this.

This same doctor had diagnosed my shoulders as both being 'frozen' and sent me for treatment with a physiotherapist who, after struggling for 6 painful months, said he could do no more; he was convinced that the problem was not a frozen shoulder but arthritis and that he was doing more harm than good to the joint. I told my doctor who told me that at my age and weight I must expect some arthritis and to keep taking the pain-killers. He didn't even send me for an X-ray. When I finally moved house and, thank goodness, got a new doctor, he only heard the cracking in my shoulder once and immediately sent me for an X-ray, which revealed that the shoulder was not only arthritic but was on the point of collapsing! He also commented that as I have severe arthritis in my NON-WEIGHT-BEARING JOINTS (I had emergency steroid-injection treatment in my hands privately for arthritis when I was in my 30s and 40s when it threatened to stop me playing the guitar), it's highly likely that I would still have suffered from it, had I not been overweight.

Whilst in my previous house I also lost 2 inches off my height in a two year period. I was worried about osteoporosis and at my request I was referred to my local NHS hospital to find out. After keeping me waiting for 6 MONTHS for the scan, the hospital wrote to me to say that they were not prepared to do it because I was above their weight threshold and the scan would not be reliable. I am told that this scan merely involves putting a WRIST into the scanner so WHY I was denied this treatment on grounds of weight is incomprehensible.

I also went for an appointment at the out-patients department at this same hospital for pains in my neck, shoulder and arm. I saw the doctor - who proceeded to march through an area full of patients and staff, loudly dictating the full details of my weight problem for all to hear! Needless to say, I had to complain to the Chief Executive of the hospital about THAT too.

The last time I was in that hospital (for a severed quadriceps tendon in my right leg), I was put in a GERIATRIC ward to recover, where one woman was screaming all night (bless her, in wasn't her fault, she was obviously senile), the lights were on all night and I couldn't sleep, the food was terrible and it took two hours for me to get someone to take me to the toilet. After 42 hours (the average stay with the degree of injury I had, I am told, can be up to 3 weeks!), with no sleep I had myself discharged from the place as I couldn't stick it any longer.

Thank goodness, in 2006, Rob and I MOVED. We decided to register with the local doctor and I immediately knew, on meeting him, that I had got a completely different type of care. Overweight people learn to recognise prejudice as a sixth sense and I knew, upon meeting him, that there was none. He is the type of doctor we all read about but rarely see and is the ONLY thing that keeps ANY faith in me in the NHS.

In December 2007 I went to see him for a routine blood pressure test but commented on the pain in my shoulder - as a result of which I went for an X-ray which produced the results mentioned above.

THAT STARTED A YEAR WHICH WAS, IN MEDICAL TERMS, A COMPLETE FIASCO. I shall précis it here, however, if you want to read the full version, you can CLICK HERE.

Not wanting to go to the local NHS hospital for many reasons including the above experiences, I asked to be referred to a local private one, that I had been to in the past and had exemplary treatment from. I didn't know that in the intervening years, that hospital had changed management company.....

I saw a consultant who confirmed that my shoulder needed replacement surgery. I asked if that hospital could cope with my weight problem (as I had been denied treatment on a number of occasions by the NHS) and was assured it COULD. I booked the operation for the 12th April, and cancelled a holiday to do it. Friends made arrangements to come and stay, work schedules changed, hotels booked and I even bought new clothes as I knew the ones I usually wear would not be easy to put on with my shoulder immobilised for 6 weeks.

A number of things then happened that made me doubt whether in fact, I was getting value for money by going private (see long version for details) and, finding the hospital was on the much-vaunted Choose& Book Scheme, I asked my doctor if I could have the operation on the NHS at that hospital. As I had already BEEN accepted by them as a private patient, he said yes and made the arrangements.

I called the consultant's secretary to let her know that I was going over to the NHS and she spoke to the surgeon who said NO PROBLEM and asked me to ask for him specifically.

I got the details for the Choose & Book appointment - with a Username and ID to use on the web. I logged on: It DIDN'T WORK. I tried three times. The system locked me out of the website - so I rang them instead. I told them the circumstances - that I had seen the consultant, had an operation date booked for April and merely wished to change it to the NHS Choose & Book Scheme.... what followed was a complete and utter FARCE.

They were extremely curt, telling me that I couldn't choose who I saw or where or when (THIS is a CHOOSE and BOOK scheme?) and that my surgeon had no RIGHT to be asked for. They said I HAD to see him again as that was 'part of the process' (what a GROSS waste of public funds!) and that if I wanted to see him in particular I should call his secretary to try and get a consultation date and they would TRY to fit in with it. So I called the consultant’s secretary AGAIN. She gave me a date of 13th February for the consultation. I rang back Choose & Book with the details. They said, NO - I couldn't have that date because it wasn't on their computer! They offered the 20th February so I took that just to keep things moving; I didn't want to lose the operation date of 12th April that was already booked. A few days later, the hospital called to tell me that the surgeon was not DOING a clinic on the 20th and would I attend on the 13th please!? I said, yes, because that's the date I originally wanted ANYWAY and had been told was not possible!

When I got to the hospital they asked me for 'the forms I was sent'. I told them I didn't have any forms and they looked somewhat disbelieving. I was given a set of very long forms to fill in - some before the consultation and even more afterwards. I then had the 2nd consultation with the same consultant, with the same results as the first one of course! During the consultation I ONCE AGAIN specifically raised the subject of my weight and the safety of the operation as this was worrying me considerably - as I am only too aware that at my weight, any operation could kill me, due to the anaesthetic. ONCE AGAIN he told me that he was confident that everything would be fine and that I should 'leave the worrying to him'. He said that he was completely happy to keep on the original date of the operation and that he would see me then. At no time did he indicate that this was subject to further review by the hospital or anyone else and I got the total impression that HIS word was final.

The following day, I finally received confirmation the appointment for the night before and all the forms I should have filled in. According to the date on the envelope, they were only POSTED ON THE DAY OF THE CONSULTATION. This was the 14th February.

I was VERY surprised when on the 22nd February I received a letter from the Choose & Book Scheme reminding me that I had yet to make an appointment to see a consultant as their records showed I hadn’t done this yet! I rang them to say that, not only had I made an appointment THROUGH THEM, but it had subsequently been changed by the hospital and I had attended it some NINE DAYS before! They said that nobody at the hospital had told THEM about any of this, hence their writing to me and said that they would then remove me from their lists in that case. I asked if this might affect my operation date in April and they said ‘NO, if you have been accepted for the operation on that date, it will be fine’.

Just to be sure however, I rang the hospital as well to check - for my own peace of mind. They passed me through three departments over some 20 minutes, none of which could help but one lady did say that ‘if the surgeon had booked me in for the procedure then I could be SURE that it was on and that they would eventually confirm all the arrangements approximate one month before the operation’. I then rang the consultant’s secretary herself as well, to check that the operation date was definitely arranged and she said, yes, the operation WAS booked - NO PROBLEM. At NO time did anyone at the hospital mention that the operation was subject to further discussion or veto by ANYONE.

Imagine my surprise then, when on the 11th March I was shocked therefore to get a letter from my family doctor enclosing a letter to him from the hospital which states: 'We have reviewed the notes and are unable to see this patient due to medical grounds because her BMI is 46 etc. THAT WAS THE FIRST THING I KNEW ABOUT ANY SUCH EXCLUSION and indeed it seems the first thing my doctor or the consultant knew either!

Having had two months of stress with the operation looming and not knowing what the outcome might be, I was extremely distressed to find that it was all for NOTHING and immediately rang the hospital to complain.... this led to months of phone calls and letters asking why all these errors had occurred? I was assured by the hospital that they were "bound by the ruling set down by the NHS". In fact IN ALL THE PHONE CALLS I HAD WITH THE HOSPITAL AT THIS TIME I WAS LED TO BELIEVE THIS WAS THE ‘FAULT’ OF THE NHS – they knew that I believed this and did not ONCE tell me that this was an arrangement that their individual hospital had with the NHS and was NOT a general ruling. The hospital were VERY quick to blame my GP for referring me at ALL but as they had agreed to accept me as a private patient, he had NO reason to believe they would reject me on the NHS! This made me EXTREMELY ANGRY as my doctor had done nothing but try to help me.

I spoke to the Director of the hospital and even wrote to the Chief Executive of the hospital group and I was assured that they would look into everything to find out what had gone wrong. They pointed out that that hospital did not have enough emergency facilities to cope with overweight patients and the complications that they might experience in surgery and while I appreciated that that was in the patient's interests I want to know WHY I had not been told about any limitations due to my weight before I was accepted for the operation. I also wanted to know why the consultant, even when prompted to think about weight issues on both occasions that I had seen him, was unaware of the limitations of the very hospital he worked at!?

I got so fed up waiting for a satisfactory reply to my complaints that on the 14th APRIL I had major, long interview with the local paper about all this. One of their FIRST questions (indeed many people's) was ‘Haven’t you been offered ANY compensation for all this mix up?' and of course I had to say NO.

On the 16th APRIL I got a letter from the Director of the private hospital, admitting, more or less that I have been ‘caught up in a lot of complex issues and she fully appreciated my distress and frustration with the system and process issues that have resulted in the situation I now found myself in.’ She seemed, in the letter, to admit many things had gone wrong and that steps were necessary to ensure that they do not happen again. This was all well and good but I had to ask - exactly how DOES THIS COMPENSATE US for months of stress and distress that both I and my husband had gone through - to say nothing of arrangements that were made by friends to come and visit, the loss of our holiday and other financial losses incurred?

I then found out from the journalist from the Sutton Coldfield News that he had spoken to the NHS who informed him, after all this, that there is NO blanket ban on people over BMI 35 after all! - it turned out that this was an individual arrangement with that particular hospital. Having already involved my MP and even the Minister for Health, Dawn Primololo in the matter, this made me even more angry. In every phone conversation I had had with the administration at the private hospital, I had been given the impression that the NHS were to blame and I believe that they let me go on believing this to deflect my anger onto the NHS and away from the hospital.

I eventually requested my full medical records from the hospital under a 'Subject Access Request' and from them found out that while in every letter and phone call I was being told that there was NO WAY the hospital could (or would) operate on me, behind my back, in emails internally in the hospital, they were using phrases like ‘I presume that she is not coming back to us’ and ‘hopefully she will have her surgery there (the local NHS hospital). If she comes back to us, then any admission would be subject to anaesthetic review here by the consultant‘s private anaesthetist’! This was certainly NEVER mooted to me as a possibility by anyone from the hospital!

On the 22nd of April I got a letter from the hospital's ‘Customer Services’, telling me that if I am not satisfied with their complaints procedure then I should write to the Healthcare Commission. I wished to ask someone there questions about this – however the Customer Services letter doesn't even carry a telephone number or email - how can a hospital provide decent ‘customer service’ if the patients cannot even SPEAK to someone there?

On the 7th May I received a letter from the hospital which once again did not even BEGIN to address any of my complaints. It mentioned that a new liaison officer had been recruited who will be working with GPs to ensure that they fully understand the ECN restrictions and the reasons for them. She also said that the consultant would have told me that his anaesthetist would have to determine whether I was safe to be treated there – EXCUSE ME!!! - NO HE DID NOT. HAD I KNOWN THAT THERE WAS ANY POSSIBILITY THAT THE OPERATION COULD BE CANCELLED APART FROM SUDDEN ILLNESS ON MY PART, I WOULD NOT HAVE BOOKED IT WHEN I SHOULD HAVE BEEN ON HOLIDAY!

The letter acknowledged that the ‘administrative process had not gone smoothly’ but blamed it all on the fact that I had had one private consultation with the surgeon and then changed to the NHS Choose & Book Scheme. I fail to see why such a simple administrative process should cause such problems, especially considering the fact that the Choose & Book Scheme insisted that I did everything ‘by the book’. I had started treatment privately three times at this particular hospital in the past and then gone on to complete it under the NHS – none of which caused the slightest problem under the previous administration. If this hospital is to continue as both a private and a NHS hospital it is surely not unexpected that they will have to cope with moving patients from an initial private consultation (that many patients have to save waiting time) to a final operation on the Choose & Book scheme and surely this simple procedure can be achieved without the mess that I faced happening? It is after all, only a case of good records being kept and efficient communication between departments at what is a VERY small hospital!

Then came the most annoying remark of all and the one that has caused me, ultimately to take the matter to the Healthcare Commission (for what THAT's worth).

She says: “I have acknowledged that the particular circumstances of your referral pathway resulted in a situation that is not idea but not that you have suffered as a result…I do not feel therefore that compensation is due for any inconvenience experienced by the administrative process not going as smoothly as intended…. “

I find THAT thoroughly insulting and lacking in any kind of professional understanding of a patient’s situation. It is like saying that as long as someone apologises and promises not to do it again, they can damage someone’s health and cause them distress, inconvenience and financial loss, with impunity! There are times when an apology is simply NOT enough! I replied to this, expressing my feelings about these comments and also contacted the Sutton News to let them know of the decision and they were only too pleased to write a follow up article which brought me a LOT of support.

Several letters (and phone calls) then passed between myself and the hospital & their Chief Executive, who of course came down on the side of his management neither of who seem to have ANY concept of the effects of months for waiting for an operation that could well be fatal. One thing an overweight person is aware of in this modern age is how dangerous surgical procedures (mainly because of anaesthetic) can be. NONE of us take them on lightly and the degree of fear, sleepless nights and resulting stress, both for the patient AND their family & friends is enormous. To go through it for NOTHING is NOT acceptable, especially when the reasons for it not going ahead so obviously should have been picked up at my very first consultation there (an opinion which seems to be backed up by members of the hospital administration in the enclosed documents). I believe that a gesture of compensation is the very LEAST this hospital could have done after all the stress and upset that their ineptitude caused. I therefore complained to the Healthcare Commission about the hospital.

Imagine my surprise when, on reading my medical files, that I found out that as soon as I suggested I might do this, the hospital was emailing the Commission, to find out who there would be handling the case.... what happened to THAT, you can find under the Healthcare Commission section....

I have been offered an operation on my shoulder by the NHS hospital that I do NOT wish to go to but frankly I am simply NOT willing to go through all the stress I went through last year again unless I am driven to it. I would now rather live with the pain. In fact, in the intervening year, my spine deteriorated so much that IT, not my shoulder, is now my prime concern as it is destroying my sleep and making walking even more difficult. This lack of exercise has meant that my weight has once more crept up which is now creating a vicious circle.....

What happened then did nothing to restore my faith in the NHS! I told my doctor about this pain in my back and he asked me if I would be willing to undergo an MRI scan. He knew that I was claustrophobic and was extremely anxious about these scanners, however he said that there was an 'open' scanner in a hospital locally and that he would refer me to them. I readily agreed. Very quickly and appointment was made - which I originally thought was for the scan but it turned out to be to see someone at yet another hospital who examined me and declared, yes, they could now refer me to the hospital that had the scanner and mark it as urgent. He also noted that I had to have an OPEN scan due to claustrophobia.

I got the appointment to have the scan and duly attended the hospital on November 20th. The letter confirming the appointment mentioned bringing a CD to listen to, to relax you etc. My husband came with me and when we got to the scanning section we first found out that all the lockers for valuables had broken locks. This didn't affect ME as I had Rob with me but when 5 o clock came, the person on duty at reception promptly announced that her shift was over and left the place completely unattended, with all the other patients valuables in the lockers unlocked! There were quite a few minutes before any staff came to take over from her. Then I was called for the scan; I picked up my CD only to be told - oh sorry, the player is out of order, we can't use those! I then went through all my details, first with a nurse and then through the person who was doing the scan. I was asked why I hadn't had the scan done nearer to my home. I explained that I had to have an OPEN scan and that my local NHS hospital only had a closed scanner. 'Oh' she says, 'You aren't booked for the open scanner, you are booked for the closed one'. I will not tell you what my reaction to THAT was but let's say it was the perfect end to a perfect year with the NHS'. On January 15th 2000 I finally got a letter telling me that I had another month to wait, until February 12th before I would finally get the results of that scan and could talk about treatment.

In the week before this appointment which was to be with the Neuro-Spinal Surgeon, the hospital changed my appointment 3 times. When I finally got to the hospital I found he was running 30 minutes late and by the time I was called, the time was almost the same as my original appointment. I also found that I was NOT, in fact, going to see the Surgeon but his Registrar, who I had already seen in October 2008. He told me my scan revealed the arthritis in my spine - which was bent out of shape at the bottom and was causing nerves to be trapped and spaces where discs could slip. I asked what they were going to do for me. He said - NOTHING. All he could recommend, after ALL THAT, was a Pain Management Clinic. I told him I went to one of those years ago and they could do NOTHING. He said that that, and the tablets I was on now (which do NOTHING to relieve the pain) were ALL that he could suggest. Surely somebody could at least have told me this 3 months ago? Instead I have been left wondering whether I had a serious complaint and exactly what I might have to go through again this year. IS THIS THE BEST THE NHS CAN DO?