Faced with a 12 to 18-month wait for a hip replacement on the NHS, housewife Barbara Price decided to do something she had never done before she went private.
After the 85-year-old’s left hip suddenly ‘went’ due to wear-and-tear arthritis in June last year, she was housebound and unable to get up to make a cup of tea.
Barbara could no longer do any cleaning, washing, cooking, gardening or shopping, and the stairs were impossible to climb, so she lived downstairs and relied on the help of her son Karl, 58.
In agonising pain that even prescribed painkillers could not touch, earlier this year Barbara spent £14,000 of her life savings to have the operation privately.
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