'Why I'm travelling abroad for knee replacement op'

Monica Fee has waited three years for a knee replacement

A woman who feels “cheated” by Northern Ireland’s health system has said she has no option but to travel abroad for treatment.

Monica Fee, from County Londonderry, has waited three years for a knee replacement and has been told there is another four-year wait for surgery.

Now she plans to travel to Lithuania next month for an operation she hopes will end the “excruciating pain”.

“I am terrified about going on my own and of having it done, but I have been backed into a corner. I don’t think I have any options left here,” she said.

The latest Northern Ireland waiting list figures will be published later on Thursday.

Monica, a self-employed hairdresser, was told three years ago she had arthritis in both knees and that they would need replacing.

In the years since she and her GP have worked to manage the pain.

“They have done everything they could possibly do to calm the pain but basically nothing seems to work,” she told BBC Radio Foyle’s North West Today programme.

“The pain is unbearable, I struggle sleeping at night… I’m not familiar with the sizes of knitting needles but it’s like the thickest knitting needle lodged in your kneecap,” Monica said.

She added: “It is not like that 24/7 but a lot of the time when you go to move, if you are sitting down and you go to get up or you go to sit down that pain is like someone stabbing you with a knitting needle. It is excruciating.”

Doctors told her when she was first placed on a waiting list it would be a seven-year wait for an operation in the health service in Northern Ireland.

In the time since, and despite trying to “put on a brave face”, Monica said “life as I know it has stopped”

“I don’t socialise in the same way, I don’t do the things I used to do,” she said.

“I used to be very active now I put off things, agree to do things then change my mind. The pain is awful especially if I don’t sleep at night.”

With a possible further four years before surgery, Monica said she started explore other options.

She learned it would cost almost £15,000 to have the surgery done in a local private hospital.

That, she said, is “a lot of money, a lot of working hours”.

“I have gone for a different option, I have done a lot of research and I am opting to go abroad for surgery,” she said.

She will pay around £7,000 for the operation she hopes will give her quality of life back.

But it’s a decision Monica said she should not have been forced to make.

'Let down completely'

That she has had to choose the option of going abroad is “wrong,” she said.

She and her husband, Monica said, are not “wealthy people” and will “have to make sacrifices to afford the surgery.

“It is wrong that you have to pay for a service when you have paid so much into the ( health) system," she said.

Monica added: "I feel I have ticked all the boxes, paid into the system, employed lots of people… I never abused the system, never claimed for anything. I just feel totally let down, let down completely."