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Nancy Doyle is showing me a video of her mum, Patricia, from a holiday last year.

She is walking along a beach in Cornwall, breeze in her hair, smiling back at her daughter.

"My mum - she's 76, she's a nice, sweet person," Nancy said.

"I know it feels a bit of a cliche to say it about your own mum, but she's a genuinely lovely person.

"She wouldn't harm a fly.

"I'm really furious about what they are doing to her."

In February, Nancy says Patricia noticed a swelling in her left eye.

She went to the optician and then her GP.

'We felt utterly powerless'

Both referred her to the eye department of her local hospital, but an appointment for tests and a biopsy never came.

Over months of waiting, Patricia's condition worsened, her eyes becoming even more swollen.

"We felt utterly powerless," Nancy said.

"Mum was frightened and exhausted with waiting and not knowing what to do - what do you do?"

In the end, the family paid £175 for a private consultation with an eye doctor who helped push Patricia's case with NHS colleagues "after we wrote what was basically a begging letter to him, and also to the local MP," Nancy said.

Nine months after her first GP visit, Patricia had a biopsy in hospital with frightening results.

"They called her back a couple of weeks later, and they told her it is cancerous," Nancy said.

"And now the oncology department, they've said: 'we need to investigate whether it has spread'.

"We all know if cancer spreads, then your odds are reduced," Nancy said, in tears.

"And we won't ever know if they'd have seen her in a more timely manner whether that is going to make a difference to the outcome. I don't even want to think about it."

'I've got no faith in the service'

"I don't know if they [the NHS] are overwhelmed, or they've just stopped caring.

"It's really just broken, disjointed, I've got no faith in the service.

"Apparently we're spending lots of taxpayers money on it, so I don't know where it's all going - no idea."

NHS pressures have been well-documented, with new figures showing that nearly six million people are waiting too long for procedures.

'I've got no independence'

In February, Lisa Hauwert, 35, injured her knee in a trampoline accident at her local leisure centre.

"It just gave way," she said.

"It was total agony and my knee swelled about three times its normal size."

Unable to safely move her, leisure staff called an ambulance "which took 12 hours to arrive".

"I was in pain, in shock, and utterly exhausted," she said.

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After several months of misdiagnoses, the mum-of two now uses crutches to walk.

She has been waiting for a knee operation for months.

"It has totally changed my life," she said.

"I can't drive, so I've got no independence.

"I can't do simple things like bathing the children, hoovering, trying to keep things going, and tidy, is really hard."

'I feel like I'm a strain and a drain on everybody else'

Lisa said her NHS-provided physiotherapist has been "excellent, from the word go".

"Without him, I'd probably be still waiting for a diagnosis, because he had to push for tests and scans in the first place, and now for the operation itself."

On a "priority surgery list" since August, Lisa said she was told she would have her operation "within 6 to 12 weeks".

"But I've been told it won't now happen until March - and that's if it's not delayed further."

She added: "It has had a huge impact on my mental health because I feel like I'm a strain and a drain on everybody else, because I am so dependent."

She said she is only coping by "remembering that there are little things that you can look forward to through the year, so right now that's Christmas".

"Then it's things you can do with the children.

"Or holidays.

"It's the only way you can keep going."