A great-grandmother who desperately needs a hip replacement says she feels “messed around” by the NHS after it cancelled her operation.

Mavis Kearns, of Park View, St Albans, was due to have the procedure at Watford General Hospital next on Saturday but was told it could no longer go ahead.

West Herts Health Trust had to cancel almost 200 non-urgent operations as it attempts to cope with increasing winter pressures.

The 82-year-old had been waiting for the operation for over a year and now she feels stuck in limbo.

She added: “I was so excited when I finally got given a date to have the operation, then I got a phone call telling me it couldn’t go ahead and I didn’t know what to say. I could have cried.

“I was in a daze so I just said thank you, and stood there with the phone in my hand.

“I’ve had a terrible time of it. I feel so messed around. I am terribly upset.

“I am so desperate, that I feel like I could go to the vet and get them to do it. They would probably treat me better. It’s so disappointing.”

When she asked them when it could be rescheduled for, but the nurse she spoke to admitted she had no idea.

Now, she is forced to wait while the pain her hip gets worse and worse and fears she will end up housebound.

“I’m on morphine all the time,” the retired carer said. “When I rang my doctor to tell him it had been cancelled and asked what to do, he told me to up the morphine. I’ll be addicted to it.

“I am in such pain. I am going to have to limp around and I cannot walk outside by myself. I walk with a stick and it hurts a lot. Even being indoors, going from chair to chair.

“I try to manage on my own and I live somewhere I get 24-hour care, but I want to be independent.”

“My mum used to have hip problems and I never appreciated how bad the pain could be until it happened to me.

“I am at a loss, I don’t know where to go or what to do.”

West Hertfordshire NHS Trust apologised and said it would get in touch with Mrs Kearns.

It said: “Due to high levels of demand for emergency care at Watford General Hospital we have implemented recommendations set out in the National Emergency Pressure Panel guidance that was issued on 2 January. This means that we had to cancel a number of non-urgent planned surgery at Watford General Hospital until the end of January.”