In some ways, what Abby Hunt has endured over the past 300 days is similar to the many thousands of other patients also waiting anxiously for surgery on the over-worked NHS. The initial hold-up for a scan was almost as agonising as the pain in her knee itself. The swelling has not subsided and it has heavily affected her work. Except, her story has a key difference: she suffered her injury while playing for Stoke City in a match against Derby County last October.
Hunt has an “osteochondral abnormality with a fragment of detached bone”, which means she has a loose piece of bone, roughly the size of a penny, in her right knee. However, she was told that Stoke’s women’s team were not covered by medical insurance and that the club could not fund private surgery for her. They would not even pay for an MRI scan.
