A Stonehaven mum who battled cancer spent more than £30,000 on private surgery to rebuild her breast after being left with “no hope” it would be done on the NHS after a four-year wait.
Naomi Mearns is one of a growing number of women to share their anguish with the P&J after waiting years for a delayed operation.
The 51-year-old found out she had breast cancer just days before the Covid lockdown in March 2020, and it soon emerged the cancer was growing rapidly.
She was given a mastectomy to remove her left breast on May 28, 2020 and told to expect a one to two-year wait for the surgery to reconstruct her breast.
But speaking to the P&J at her home in Stonehaven, Naomi said there was no mention of the fact she could be left indefinitely waiting.
‘Scrap heap’
“It’s just soul destroying,” she explained.
“I feel for everybody.
“I feel like the women that had their mastectomies during lockdown have been put on a scrap heap.”
We revealed in October how women waiting on delayed reconstructions have been left languishing at the bottom of the NHS list due to health service pressures.
Last month, we detailed how 34 women are waiting for the surgery at NHS Grampian – the longest waiting since 2017 – with one taking her fight to Holyrood.
‘You can’t move on with your life’
Naomi, who is a solicitor, recovered from breast cancer after gruelling rounds of chemotherapy, as well as radiotherapy, and kept hoping she would eventually be seen for her reconstruction.
But she was repeatedly told she wasn’t moving up the list because only cancer patients were being prioritised for mastectomies with immediate reconstructions.
The wait took a mental toll and she admits she “hated” her body.
She said: “You have to look at your body every day. When I looked at myself in the mirror, it was like somebody had got an eraser and rubbed out one of my breasts.
“You can’t move on with your life. I’m a single woman and I found it incredibly difficult. You just could not move on with the way I was. I just felt I was defective in some kind of way and it really did affect my mental health.”
Private surgery cost over £30k
Naomi, who has a 17-year-old son, started to look into private options, eventually getting the surgery at the McIndoe Centre in Surrey.
It is a highly complex surgery and only a few centres in the UK generally provide it.
She underwent the operation to rebuild her breast using tissue from her stomach on November 2 – in a surgery which lasted around eight hours.
But it set her back more than £30,000. The operation cost about £28,000, along with costs for a scan, flights and accommodation for two weeks.
The recovery process will take around three months but it is going well and Naomi feels “total relief” to finally get it done.
However, she wants the government and the NHS to find a solution for the other women still waiting on the NHS list.
“There will be lots of ladies who don’t have insurance policies or don’t have the funds to pay for private healthcare and I just feel it’s grossly unfair for them”, she said.
“I do hope they can try and do something to manage this situation until they start at least operating on some and not having the list just sitting there and getting added to and not moving.”
NHS Grampian apologises
An NHS Grampian spokesman apologised but said its surgical capacity “remains challenged”, with patients prioritised based on “immediate clinical need”.
The spokesman added: “Breast reconstruction operations usually take in excess of 12 hours to complete and require a large amount of staff and theatre provisions, which we are currently unable to provide due to a need to prioritise demand elsewhere.
“We have been aware of the issues and challenges this creates for these patients for some time and recently contacted the Scottish Government requesting either additional funding or the use of capacity elsewhere in Scotland, in the hope they can be seen sooner.”
The Scottish Government said it recognises some patients are waiting “too long” for delayed reconstructive breast surgery.
The government says it is engaging with health boards to develop a progress a plan for patients with delayed reconstruction.
The draft budget, if approved by parliament, will provide £200 million to reduce waiting lists and build capacity.
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