Last Monday I was a bit tired and grumpy after having a fabulous weekend celebrating my 65th birthday.

But I still didn’t have a date for my hip replacement.I had been on the urgent list for 15 weeks.

The only things that had happened was the top of my femur was collapsing and I had been invited to a pre operation education workshop on October 13.Oh yes I was now using a walking stick all the time and having some fairly heavy duty pain relief.And I resigned from a casual job at the Electoral Commission because I couldn’t stand for two hours at night which is when the training was going to happen

So I phoned Waikato Orthopedics because I had been told by Te What Ora (Health NZ?) that my file had been outsourced to the private system on July 24.I asked the nice lady there if she knew what the process would be going forward.

She suggested I phone the number on the invitation text I got for the pre op workshop.The first number was no longer assigned to a phone!!

Fortunately there was another mobile number for queries in the body of the text.So I phoned that number .That person put me onto a very nice person who was in charge of enhanced recovery which struck me as funny (due to lack of sleep) because I hadn’t had any surgery to recover from.She asked me if I had been contacted by Southern Cross ( the private hospital I had been told I had been outsourced to).When I said no she seemed surprised and said she would find out what was or was not happening and phone me back by the end of the day.

A couple of hours later I got a call from Waikato Orthopedics offering me surgery on October 27.I was very thankful although I did say I was ready yesterday rather tersely.

The hospital enhanced recovery person rang back later to check if I’d heard anything.

The next day the clinical nurse specialist who seems to be in charge of bookings for surgery also phonedthe next day.

Now I am beyond grateful my surgery is going to happen and I have nothing but praise for those wonderful people who have to work in our hospital system which is rapidly marching towards being a third world system.

But I would to go on record as saying to our politicians that I do not care what colour your party is or it’s philosophy, put your big people pants on, and starting working together to fix our health system and while you’re at it stop blaming the public service for every that is wrong in our countr