A pensioner has been forced to make two gruelling 125 mile trips by taxi, plane and ferry each week just to stay alive. Retired nurse Mary Jefferson, 73, from Lochboisdale in the Outer Hebrides, will die if she doesn't undergo kidney dialysis after her organs began failing a year ago. Mary spent nine weeks fighting for her life with sepsis after suffering renal failure back in January 2024. She is now on the waiting list for a transplant, but in the meantime must trek to the Western Isles Dialysis Unit in Stornoway for treatment twice every week. The current waiting list is three years. Her trip starts by riding in a taxi from her home to Benbecula Airport, where she then flies to Stornoway. When she arrives, she gets another taxi to the hospital. In total, the trip takes six hours there and back. When flights are cancelled, she's forced to take the ferry.

Mary told the DailyRecord the journey is exhausting, but that she is often left fearing she will miss her treatment or get stranded in Stornoway due to unreliable weather and transport. She believes the situation shows a lack of care for people living remotely and is calling on NHS bosses to provide better treatment at a more local level. Mary said: "After dialysis I feel very tired. I have no appetite and I'm generally exhausted. I never know if I will get home that night so my life is dramatically impacted and I cannot make plans. The plane which should fly me to and from Stornoway often does not fly. Last weekend I had to go to Uig on Skye to get the ferry back across to Lochmaddy on North Uist.

"It took four hours and I felt awful, I couldn't eat anything and just wanted to go to bed. Sometimes I even have to spend nights in an NHS nursing home and the accommodation is a good distance from the hospital. "The staff at the renal unit are absolutely brilliant and I can't fault them. But the system is broken. I feel like the NHS bosses don’t really care about people like me. "It’s horrible to think that ,but when they put you through this every week what else am I supposed to think? There is a perfectly good hospital in Benbecula, which is only 25 minutes away by car, but they don’t have the facilities for anything. People getting chemotherapy also have to travel to Stornoway.".

A spokesperson for NHS Western Isles said: "We are not in a position to comment on individual cases. With all patients we take a person-centred approach, ensuring that the necessary care and treatment are provided in the most suitable, safe and effective environment. 'All options, risks and benefits are part of that conversation with patients. In the case of dialysis, the service is provided at the Western Isles Hospital in Stornoway. Recent changes to the travel infrastructure, particularly air travel between our islands in the Western Isles, does create additional disruption and anxiety for patients travelling to health when unplanned travel cancellations occur.".