THE hospital appointment is at seven in the morning, then come four hours of gruelling treatment and home for lunch in the early afternoon with luck.

It’s a daunting day for anyone but this is the routine for 70-year-old Ludlow widow Hazel Noble, three days every week for the past eight years.

But this is not the complete story because this is a major improvement for Hazel compared with what she had to contend with when she first needed kidney dialysis.

Hazel has complete kidney failure and having dialysis three times a week is essential to keep her alive.

But, in a way, Hazel is fortunate because she is able to have her dialysis a five-minute drive from home at Ludlow Hospital.

This is thanks to an investment of approaching £250,000 from the League of Friends at Ludlow Hospital.

There are seven dialysis units at Ludlow Hospital with five of them in regular use by people like Hazel.

But it has not always been that way for Hazel and, for a few hours, she and other patients lived with the fear that dialysis was being withdrawn from Ludlow Hospital.

Fortunately for people like Hazel, NHS chiefs decided not to press ahead with the proposal that would have saved £59,000.

But for Hazel it has reignited fears for the future as the NHS in Shropshire looks for ways to save money.

“I do not know what I would have done if dialysis had been removed from Ludlow and I would have had to do some serious thinking,” said Hazel.

“Before the unit opened in Ludlow, I would be up at 5.45am to wait for transport to take me to Shrewsbury.

“I could never be sure what time I would be on the machine and then there was the journey back in the afternoon. Sometimes my husband Eric would pick me up but he has since died.

“The prospect of having to restart the trip to Shrewsbury every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, perhaps for the rest of my life, was too awful to contemplate.

“Being treated in Ludlow, close to home and by people whom I know and who know me and my foibles, makes a world of difference

“It is a constant fear that the dialysis unit in Ludlow might be removed and the few hours when it looked as if that might be on the cards were awful.

“The important thing is to make people aware just how important local and convenient kidney dialysis is in giving people like me some sort of quality of life.”

Kidneys filter the blood, removing poisons which otherwise would eventually result in death for people like Hazel who have complete kidney failure.

“After each treatment I feel very tired but much better and my appetite returns but, by the time that the next cycle comes around, I am feeling very tired and sick,” added Hazel.

Her only hope of ending the cycle of treatment is a transplant but she is not optimistic.

“I have been on the transplant list for a long time but I am told that I am difficult to match so, welcome to my world, but I cannot stress how much difference being able to have dialysis in Ludlow makes,” Hazel said.

Peter Corfield, chairman of the Ludlow Hospital League of Friends, has no doubt that the right decision has been made to retain the dialysis unit.

“There may not be a lot of people involved but the difference that the dialysis unit in Ludlow makes to the lives of people is so important,” he said.