THE mother of a woman from Fernhill Heath whose operation to remove a brain tumour has been cancelled three times has said the stress of the experience is taking a serious toll on her daughter’s health.

Emily Bennett was originally scheduled to have the operation to remove the benign growth – which is causing her to have seizures as well as memory loss and extreme tiredness – at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital on Tuesday, December 2 last year, but the procedure was cancelled in favour of more urgent cases.

Although the 24-year-old’s operation was rescheduled for Monday, December 8, it was again cancelled as there were no beds available.

A third appointment booked for Monday, January 12 was also cancelled for the same reason, and her mother Maxine Renton said the uncertainty was starting to have a serious impact on her daughter’s health.

“When I woke her up to tell her it had been cancelled again she had a seizure because she was so upset,” she said.

“She’s been getting so worked up about it and she has been getting worse with little things like her memory and she’s very, very tired all the time.

“She just wants it to be done with so she can go on and live a normal life.”

Ms Bennett had an operation to remove a malignant tumour when she was eight, but developed two more two years ago. An annual MRI scan in October last year showed they had grown and the decision was made to operate.

Ms Renton said the experience had been extremely stressful for both her and her daughter and said she believed spending so much time finding beds was not a good use of doctor’s time.

“They shouldn’t be spending their time trying to find beds,” she said.

“They got to university and get all their qualifications because they want to help people, but they just end up spending all their time trying to find beds.”

A spokesperson for University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the QE, said the organisation had recently come under significant pressure, with an eight per cent increase in the amount of patients visiting A&E over the past 12 months.

“We regret that any operation has to be cancelled and acknowledge the distress this can cause to both patients and their relatives,” she said.

“Current cancellations of some scheduled procedures are a reflection of the unprecedented rise in emergency procedures being carried out within the trust.

“This is compounded by an increase in the volume of patients wanting to be treated at, and being referred to, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.”

Overall 90,000 more patients were admitted to the hospital between April 2013 and March 2014 and, in an effort to deal with the increase in demand, the trust stopped accepting referrals for elective procedures from outside Birmingham last year.