Boy to fly to India for spine op
A mother who has been told her son may have to wait a year for a spine operation to restore his mobility is to fly him to India for the procedure.
Elliot Knott, 14, of Charminster, Dorset, injured his back in a ice-skating accident on New Year's Eve.
His mother Karen, 44, has opted to pay £4,700 for him to have the work done in Delhi, plus £1,260 on flights.
Southampton General Hospital said she had been told the worst-case wait and hoped things could go ahead soon.
Ms Knott was told by the hospital that Elliot would have to wait 17 weeks to see a consultant, and then, if he was considered an urgent case, would be put on a nine-month waiting list.
The keen swimmer, who is captain of the West Dorset Warriors swimming team, suffers from spondylolisthesis, a condition that develops when a vertebra slips out of position in the spine and presses on a nerve.
He has been housebound since Easter and unable to go to lessons at the Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester, where he is due to start his GCSEs in September.
Mrs Knott, who has the flights booked for 9 August and has taken the summer off work to care for her son, said the waiting time was "ridiculous".
"He can move around the house but if he stands up for more than two or three minutes it's quite painful and you can see by the way he walks that he must be in pain.
'Scarce skills'
"I don't know what state he would be in psychologically if he had to wait for a whole year," she said.
A spokesperson for Southampton General Hospital said the hospital was trying to balance high demand with scarce skills.
"What [Mrs Knott] has been given are the worst-case maximum waiting time targets but hopefully things can happen earlier, depending on the individual clinical issues for Elliot.
"We understand how frustrating the situation feels for patients and their families. We are certainly not either inflexible or unsympathetic."