"Urology department has let down us down"

Anything else?

My husband has waited 5 months (with the same catheter that was installed on the 20th of September 2012) for a prostate operation. The consultant hoped that she could operate before Christmas - unfortunately we were naive to think she meant Christmas 2012! He had a full day pre-op assessment on the 10th of October.

After several complaints from me and patient phone calls every week from my husband to the Urology dept he was finally asked to attend the Day Surgery unit today. Originally he was asked to arrive at 7.30am, but another phone call changed that to 12.30pm. We arrived at 11.45am and sat until the late afternoon when he saw the anaesthetist and had more blood taken. At 5.30pm after a day without food or drink he was called into the consultant and told that because of over-running my husband had lost his slot to have the operation and would have to wait anything up to another month for an available slot! After sitting around for 5 hours my husband was offered sympathy and a cup of tea.

He has had to cut out Warfarin and Clopidogrel and I am having to inject him with a nightly dose of Clexane until a slot for his operation can be found.

am a librarian by profession, not a nurse or a doctor and find this task very distressing.

The fact that we have been given 28 doses of Clexane suggests that we will be lucky if he has his operation before the end of March. Could it be that he is coming up to his 82 nd birthday and is there fore being shunted to the back of the queue?