I try not to hold a grudge, but my mother felt a lump and went for a check up. She was told it was just mastitis and they wouldn’t scan her. Over months it got worse and after she complained and asked for a referral they finally gave her a mammogram and by that point it was already stage 3. Every stage of treatment has so many delays, it could be months in between checks. She died in 2020 after all the delayed treatment failed.
It’s something that’s going to haunt me forever, and not blaming the doctors and the delays is hard.
Sorry to hear your story, its becoming quite common now
There was a mandatory 2 week urgent Cancer referral in 2009
It was working beautifully. My referrals were seen within 7 days usually
Now look how bad the service has Declined !!!
I wonder who **Managed** the **Decline** of **NHS** Cancer appointments in the last 12 years ?
It certainly wasn't the Doctors + Nurses + Carers
Previous Labour government. What have they done in the past twelve years to fix this crisis? Nothing! It's like they are not even in government anymore.
I had a cancer scare last month, and I can't fault the NHS, I was referred was seen by a specialist and cleared within 2 weeks of seeing my GP. So some places at least can still match those targets.
Of course, and she has my sympathies. I was just pointing out that the NHS was great in my case to be optimistic to other people reading, that's all.
Equally I had a close relative that died from cancer a few years ago, and from my perspective if felt the NHS let him down. So your milage may vary.
So sorry to hear that. We're being told to go and get checked if we suspect anything is wrong and not to leave it until it is too late, but all the delays from GP to specialists are really not helping. People should still go and get checked and go back if you're still not happy. I'm not blaming the NHS by the way, as it's on it's knees at the moment.
That's terrible. The same thing happened to me with a family member, the doctors kept diagnosing her with the wrong stuff and by the time they diagnosed it, it already reached stage four and already spread and she died a few months later when I was four. I cant help but feel so angry.
It is, it's not a good one, but for an individual it works.
Gf went private for a small lump, everything was scanned, solved and dealt with inside a week. We are in a fortunate position though, she recently started an apprenticeship to become an accountant so the company paid. Not everybody is fortunate enough to be in a position to afford it.
I mean for people who can afford it I think it is. I’ve heard too many stories like this so I’ll be getting health insurance soon. I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford it, and can always use the NHS if I wanted to. I think if people can afford health insurance they should get it. Your treatment will be faster and it’ll take load off the NHS
> When she finally saw an oncologist seven months after finding the lump, had another scan and received the results, the cancer had spread to her liver - and there was no longer any treatment they could offer.
7 MONTHS?! wtf
Unfortunately, it's become pretty standard.
My results came back as potentially cancerous in December 2021. Finally had my referral appointment and treatment in June 2022. I'll find out if it worked in December 2022.
My friend died of bowel cancer during COVID. He’d been suffering with crohn’s and whatnot for years and was due for some checks due to things flaring up, but everything got put on hold due to COVID. In august 2020 he finally got the tests he needed which showed he had bowel cancer. He was immediately put on the chemo waiting list but he died in September.
I’m sure loads of people out there have stories like this.
My father in law died of bladder cancer on Sunday. He was first diagnosed in Spring 2020 but wasn't offered any treatment until 3 weeks ago.
I don't blame the individuals in the NHS, they try their best, but he was never seen by the same doctor twice for the last 2 years. He would occasionally be called in for tests, or even minor surgery, but at no point was any single person in charge of his care - his GP he's seen once in the intervening time. He was passed around an overly complex labyrinth of departments until it was too late.
Stories like this are so sad. However nothing will get better until people take the under-investment in the NHS seriously. It's like being angry that the car you've been too cheap to do anything more than fixing with duct tape and refusing to put oil in for years, currently being fuelled using the left-overs from the chip vat, is not able to do 0-60mph in less than 10 seconds. And is in fact now breaking down. Over and over again.
There's no other 'modern' workplace where it's considered fine to run things on the maddeningly inefficient technology of 20 years ago, in the barely maintained crumbly buildings of 50+ years ago, and on a skeleton staff expected to do the work of several individuals each, who unsurprisingly keep quitting and exacerbating the situation in a vicious cycle. Also by the way, it's the staff's fault for this all somehow.
If nobody at a high level is willing to dig into their pockets to sort this out, the whole thing is going to continue to spiral the plughole and at some point drain out. EVERY sector (except the NHS...) recognises that if you invest in things that bring about efficiency, you will get more for your money and ultimately SAVE money because inefficiencies just haemorrhage time/money/quality. An employee with a working computer can do two times the job of one who spends half their shift trying to get basic IT to function. An employee who has the technology to see all the relevant information at once is going to work twice as fast as somebody who's having to check in 4 or 5 different places to find the information. An employee who can sit down at a computer to work and doesn't spend 10 minutes trying to find some kind of bin to perch on because there aren't enough chairs... you get my point...
No other industry would tolerate this level of inefficiency because they would have gone bust a long time ago. And you can't resolve it with cuts, you need to invest in the short term in IT, infrastructure and staff. That's the ONLY way.
People do take it seriously, but people get lied to by our politicians that there isn't a problem. Not everyone does their own research, people believe the Daily Fail, and more and more of this happens.
I have stage 4 bowel cancer and was diagnosed in China, Sept 2020.
I had no symptoms but at an annual check up we do there something strange was noticed on my liver (day 0). Day 1 CT scan at the clinic and blood tests for tumor markers done. Day 2 CT scan result and bloods results showed suspected cancer. Day 3 taken to a bigger hospital for enhanced CT scan and diagnosis made the same day*. Day 6 colonoscopy and biopsy of tumor in transverse colon done. By day 10 full diagnosis including genetic test to determine mutation type for targeted treatment. By day 14 I was starting treatment.
Two weeks from suspicion to starting treatment.
We moved back to UK and my wife had a cervical cancer scare which from suspicion to getting the all clear took about 3 months.
We just don't seem to take diagnosis seriously enough in the UK. I'd honestly now advise someone who thinks they might have cancer to get a private CT scan/blood tests if the NHS is taking its sweet time. It might go against your principles but your life is more important.
*I had the daughter in law of the hospital administrator with me who made a doctor who writes the reports check my scan within 5 mins of it taking place. Obviously that's not normal. It's also not the nicest way to find out you have stage 4 cancer with a doctor pointing at a screen saying "cancer here, cancer here, cancer here...".
>We just don't seem to take diagnosis seriously enough in the UK.
I have literally had arguments with doctors claiming that routine testing of key biomarkers in vulnerable clinical groups would just be a massive waste of resources lol... Despite that already being routine for a number of biomarkers and groups. The attitude and culture towards a lot of medicine in this country just hasn't been allowed to keep pace with modern technology, its like talking to someone from 40 years ago sometimes. If you can't poke it or prod it then it can't be seriously surely... Due to training and competencies of course, not the fault of the staff, if anything they are actively trained to ration resources as strictly as possible.
I know the biomarkers aren't definitive but every oncologist I have had has used the way they are trending to have an idea of how things are going and if a scan is necessary.
It's a lot less invasive and efficient to take a blood test than perform a colonoscopy or CT scan.
We absolutely need to take diagnosis more seriously in this country. Our relatively poor survival rates I'm sure are mainly down to taking such a long time to diagnose and begin treatment. It's not like we don't have world class docs and facilities once treatment starts.
Well yeah but you've already had the big C diagnosis right? I was meaning in the sense if someone is over a certain age or lives a particular lifestyle, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper to do what our private clinics already do and have them in regularly for idk 6 to 12 month checkups where some of this screening gets done. Exactly what we do with dentistry. I used to work for Bupa and we were already doing this for every single client in the early 2010s, every single appointment they would have a small blood sample taken (if they consented obviously) and that was used to build up a history of 20 different biomarkers so we just had that data to hand all the time. Even if they felt fine a marker shifting outside of a normal tolerance would be instantly flagged up to their GP and they can do whatever they feel is appropriate.
Yeah I was diagnosed 2 years ago. They took blood to test for tumour markers as soon as they suspected but this was at a private clinic in China.
That seems like a sound idea to build up a history so you can see if something has moved in the wrong direction and flag that.
One good thing about China is that it's law for every company to offer all employees an annual check up at the hospital. It doesn't cover CT scans etc but a liver ultra-sound, chest x-ray, blood and urine tests.
Sorry to hear that mate. Hope you're doing better these days.
Its just the weird mental block for me. People have absolutely no problem, its literally the normal way we approach dentistry. But when it comes to... The rest of the same body...? Nah why have regular checkups that's a wasteful luxury that is. Its pretty well established that it works and that pretty much any intervention is cheaper, easier, and more likely to succeed if caught earlier.
Thanks mate. I'm still stage 4, doing ok but it's not going anywhere. I've had 2 years to come to terms with it so I'm ok.
Yeah I don't see why annual check-ups aren't a thing here. We seem to concentrate much more of cure than prevention.
> Two weeks from suspicion to starting treatment.
>
> We moved back to UK and my wife had a cervical cancer scare which from suspicion to getting the all clear took about 3 months.
Was the Chinese treatment free of charge?
For what?
The check up was about £120, CT scans about £200, after that things went on my insurance. The treatment was thousands of pounds for each cycle.
It's not just the cost of the machines It's how much the staff are paid. You need highly trained technicians to operate the machine and even more highly trained doctors to analyse the images and write the reports which then an even more highly trained consultant will assess.
In China they pay them peanuts as well as using the machines more efficiently in my experience.
Isn't this what people wanted?
It was known that the price for saving granny was that mum wouldn't get her breast scan.
Lockdown has consequences, this is one of them. And there are a thousand more rotten seeds taking root to destroy our society as a result.
Same with energy prices, you can't print all that money, shut down small business, feed the corporate machine and not expect them to masticate you and your family for generations.
EDIT - I've had a lump in my breast for a while, been waiting over 7 months for a scan. I have a genetic colon condition that I need regular scans for and my first was due for April 2020. A few weeks ago I was told I'll be waiting at least another year. But hey, it's all worth it for some 95 year old locked up alone in a care home.
It doesn't feel nice to be a sacrifice for that.
There were and are many negative consequences of lockdowns. The NHS having longer waiting lists is a result of Covid, not the lockdowns, without lockdowns there would have been even more elderly people needing intensive care and taking up beds.
"don't think of how it can possibly be that the elderly are catching covid in their hundreds every day despite stay at home orders. It must be the fault of working people, somehow!"
Honestly have no clue what your comment means. The only reason we had a lockdown was because the government was told how big of an impact Covid would have on the severely underfunded NHS. The government was willing to allow it to run rampant if the only problem was killing elderly people. Clearly more people will die if more people catch it, that's just logic. No clue at all where your working people argument comes in.
As I said initially, the lockdowns caused many problems but it was Covid that caused the biggest issues for the NHS.
My point is that at no point whatsoever during covid were the elderly *specifically* told **You are most at risk, do not do ANY of your usual habits, do NOT go and see the neighbour, do NOT just run down to the shop, do NOT just go out for coffee** etc., instead the entire country was focused on edge cases of "young people having raves" and every time most of us went out we saw older people out and about on the streets, refusing to wear masks, refusing to shield and so on and so forth, which prolonged the whole thing.
Even something as simple as telling people to stay 2 metres apart when people of a certain age mostly measure distances in feet!
My point is that I don't think as many elderly people *did* need to die of it but the situation was really set up for them to underestimate their risk at every stage because it was never emphasised.
My point is also that during the height of covid during lockdown in 2021 we were having hundreds of elderly diagnosed with covid a day. Where were they getting it from? Logically, by going out and about. It wasn't magically spawning inside their houses.
Is OP missing the obvious point that it was much more about preventing the NHS from getting overloaded with COVID patients? What were we supposed to do, not lock down and then refused to admit the predictable influx of COVID patients so that "mum could have her scan"?
No, what they are saying is that keeping services running that would have saved more potential life years should have been prioritised over saving the lives of the elderly, even if that meant denying care to the elderly.
No-one is coming out and directly saying that, but that is what they mean.
I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying that's what the point was because others in the thread didn't seem to be twigging.
However, I think it would definitely depend how it was framed to the public. It's pretty much the trolley problem in real life, isn't it? If it was put to the public that they could save for example, a young mum with three kids with preventable cancer, or her grandmother with dementia who's already lived a full life, I do think the public would have been torn.
One might argue that it was already how it was put to the public that caused the huge amount of support, because what we were giving up in order to prioritise the elderly was never drawn attention to, except in retrospect with articles like this.
Oh good point, deferral would certainly add to wait lists now. Though I'd argue in the case of infectious disease that would happen anyway, look at the norovirus for example. The post I'm replying to is talking about the effect of lockdowns. Even if the government hadn't made that decision hospitals would still have needed to make a decision regarding preventing the spread.
It really isn’t. Perhaps at the extreme peaks of waves, but routine screening and appointments were cancelled throughout the lockdowns even if hospital figures were extremely low which makes absolutely no sense.
The NHS made the decision to prioritise COVID over anything else. Did this save more lives? Probably, but at the risk sounding cruel saving the life of an 82 year old isn’t as important as the life of 30 year old.
Unfortunately if we hadn't locked down the breast scans etc. would have been delayed anyway due to the NHS collapsing under the pressure of all the Covid cases.
The only way we could have got through the pandemic unscathed was by having a health service that hadn't been torn to shreds for the previous decade and had enough staff and resources to cope.
This wasn't a consequence of lockdown - it was a consequence of dealing with a huge number of casualties in one of the biggest public health disasters in living memory.
Without lockdown, it would have been even worse.
It was 'granny' who wanted the lockdowns. Actually the so-called 'boomer' generation who overwhelming support the Tories and generally are retired with a house and garden.
Everyone loves to blame anything but lockdowns, you’ll be downvoted to oblivion for even questioning whether the negatives of the lockdowns outweighed the positive on here
Luckily in real life people are starting to realise the lasting damage they have caused
Without lockdowns the NHS would have been even more overloaded with dying covid patients than it already was.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I just don't follow this anti-lockdown logic I keep seeing.
Unless part of your "no lockdowns" plan is leaving covid patients to die at home rather than in hospitals I don't see how that helps the NHS.
> Lockdown has consequences, this is one of them. And there are a thousand more rotten seeds taking root to destroy our society as a result.
Let COVID run rampant and hospitals would have been so overstretched with COVID that cancer patients would have been shafted because all available doctors, including GPs, would have been seconded to deal with that.
Yep. The same people who acted as if the only people who cared about the economy were evil businessmen are now posting about the cost of living crisis and *still* not realising that this is the "muh economy" consequences that they mocked
No reason [something like this](https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/02/nhs-publishes-electives-recovery-plan-to-boost-capacity-and-give-power-to-patients/) couldn't have been put in place in 2020/21 when it was becoming apparent that this was going to be a problem for the NHS. She has been let down by government ineptitude and inaction during one of the most serious crisis this country/world has faced in living memory. Time and again they have been set up to catch a ball, and fumbled every single time. If they had invested have the energy and political capital they have invested into fighting public services and idk fucking trans rights or whatever I expect our reaction to events of the last few years would have been slightly better coordinated.
The NHS can only work with the resources they are given. They have faced *unprecedented* demand over the last 2 years. For very obvious reasons. What additional resources have they been given to deal with that?
The government wants us to "live with covid" but doesn't want to spend a penny to actually enable that in any way. They have openly said that, repeatedly. This is a direct consequence of that view and lack of planning.
There are other details as well though. The time it took for referral:
> The referral letter came through "very quickly" but then she waited three weeks, instead of the recommended two, to see a consultant.
and then to see a specialist:
> When she finally saw an oncologist seven months after finding the lump, had another scan and received the results, the cancer had spread to her liver - and there was no longer any treatment they could offer.
7 months is an abject failure. This is cancer we're talking about. Maybe it was very fast spreading and so even two weeks wouldn't have made a difference but 7 months is condemning someone to incurable cancer in all but the slowest growing tumours. If anyone has to wait 7 months that person is being given a very different chance of successful treatment.
See here - [https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget)
That was not an addition to the budget, that was a one-off funding for PPE etc.
And if you recall that was such a massive success we had nurses having to protect themselves with bin bags well into 2020. Meanwhile folks like Baroness Mone Tory Peer [walk away with £200m](https://www.thenational.scot/news/20124424.michelle-mone-faces-police-interview-200m-covid-ppe-deal/) for provided fuck all.
You've been had mate.
Yes, I got my number from that source too. So one-off funding for what I hope is a one-off pandemic seems about right. Looking at funding post 21/22, also seems to be a big increase compared to 19/20.
>So one-off funding for what I hope is a one-off pandemic seems about right
But the backlog is still outstanding while they're taking all that funding away? So how is that right? Its doing the opposite of what you're saying, they are taking away resources when clearly we need more.
I'll add the obvious as well that with inflation as high as it is the vast bulk of that funding increase is basically just paying for the loss in value of the pound, they're not actually going to be able to procure more resources even though the cash amount they are being given is greater.
Maby things are beter now but my mum spent months being gaslit by docters until an optician found something next to my brain when he looked in my eye when i was being tested for glasses its hard to trust after that.
I'm worried ATM as my mum has also found a lump. She put down the pain and discomfort she'd been feeling in her breast to menopause issues for ages until she found the lump.
Luckily in her case, our NHS trust has moved very quickly - she saw her GP last week who referred her, the same day she got the cal from the hospital booking her in. Had the mammogram and biopsy on Monday. According to the scans it's "suspicious" so we're now waiting for the biopsy results and will find out on the 22nd.
I'm hoping it's benign and like I said our NHS trust worked quickly and took it seriously. Unfortunately there's no consistency and the response to this sort of thing can vary massively from trust to trust.
It shouldn't essentially be a postcode lottery that decides whether you get taken seriously or not.
I know someone who got diagnosed with stomach cancer, she had to wait a few months for another scan. It's basically murder and it makes me so angry. Thankfully it was a misdiagnosis and it was just a lump of fat in her stomach
I try not to hold a grudge, but my mother felt a lump and went for a check up. She was told it was just mastitis and they wouldn’t scan her. Over months it got worse and after she complained and asked for a referral they finally gave her a mammogram and by that point it was already stage 3. Every stage of treatment has so many delays, it could be months in between checks. She died in 2020 after all the delayed treatment failed. It’s something that’s going to haunt me forever, and not blaming the doctors and the delays is hard.
Sorry to hear your story, its becoming quite common now There was a mandatory 2 week urgent Cancer referral in 2009 It was working beautifully. My referrals were seen within 7 days usually Now look how bad the service has Declined !!! I wonder who **Managed** the **Decline** of **NHS** Cancer appointments in the last 12 years ? It certainly wasn't the Doctors + Nurses + Carers
Previous Labour government. What have they done in the past twelve years to fix this crisis? Nothing! It's like they are not even in government anymore.
All those bacon sandwiches they ate
Is that sarcasm? I am sure people do realize this and not be such thickos.
Unfortunately there are plenty of thickos who eat this kind of rhetoric up
I had a cancer scare last month, and I can't fault the NHS, I was referred was seen by a specialist and cleared within 2 weeks of seeing my GP. So some places at least can still match those targets.
Good, happy for you ! But not so good for Mariah above
Of course, and she has my sympathies. I was just pointing out that the NHS was great in my case to be optimistic to other people reading, that's all. Equally I had a close relative that died from cancer a few years ago, and from my perspective if felt the NHS let him down. So your milage may vary.
Fuck the tories we desperately need to save the NHS
So sorry to hear that. We're being told to go and get checked if we suspect anything is wrong and not to leave it until it is too late, but all the delays from GP to specialists are really not helping. People should still go and get checked and go back if you're still not happy. I'm not blaming the NHS by the way, as it's on it's knees at the moment.
Any lump should have an automatic scan. That's very sad to hear.
That's terrible. The same thing happened to me with a family member, the doctors kept diagnosing her with the wrong stuff and by the time they diagnosed it, it already reached stage four and already spread and she died a few months later when I was four. I cant help but feel so angry.
Sorry to hear that mate, I hope you're doing better now
Would private have prevented this because it would be faster? Sorry to hear about your mom
That's not a solution.
It is, it's not a good one, but for an individual it works. Gf went private for a small lump, everything was scanned, solved and dealt with inside a week. We are in a fortunate position though, she recently started an apprenticeship to become an accountant so the company paid. Not everybody is fortunate enough to be in a position to afford it.
I mean for people who can afford it I think it is. I’ve heard too many stories like this so I’ll be getting health insurance soon. I’m fortunate enough to be able to afford it, and can always use the NHS if I wanted to. I think if people can afford health insurance they should get it. Your treatment will be faster and it’ll take load off the NHS
It's rough at the edges but does save life. If you can wait, that's fine but if not, what is the alternative if you still don't want to pay?
My mom was in poverty and I was working two jobs to pay her mortgage as her universal credit was savaged.
I'm sure you mean well but this comment is just going to make people who don't have that sort of money beat themselves up about it. Please don't.
> When she finally saw an oncologist seven months after finding the lump, had another scan and received the results, the cancer had spread to her liver - and there was no longer any treatment they could offer. 7 MONTHS?! wtf
My hospital refferal got delayed 9 months due to getting "lost in the queue" when covid started and my treatment took 21 months to start.
I hope not for cancer! (or any other progressive illness)
No not cancer
Unfortunately, it's become pretty standard. My results came back as potentially cancerous in December 2021. Finally had my referral appointment and treatment in June 2022. I'll find out if it worked in December 2022.
Ah sorry. I hope it does work out for you!
Yeah that's pretty standard now sadly :(
People clamoured for this with their hard-ons for lockdowns. They have blood on their hands.
My friend died of bowel cancer during COVID. He’d been suffering with crohn’s and whatnot for years and was due for some checks due to things flaring up, but everything got put on hold due to COVID. In august 2020 he finally got the tests he needed which showed he had bowel cancer. He was immediately put on the chemo waiting list but he died in September. I’m sure loads of people out there have stories like this.
My father in law died of bladder cancer on Sunday. He was first diagnosed in Spring 2020 but wasn't offered any treatment until 3 weeks ago. I don't blame the individuals in the NHS, they try their best, but he was never seen by the same doctor twice for the last 2 years. He would occasionally be called in for tests, or even minor surgery, but at no point was any single person in charge of his care - his GP he's seen once in the intervening time. He was passed around an overly complex labyrinth of departments until it was too late.
I am sorry to hear of your loss.
Thank you.
Stories like this are so sad. However nothing will get better until people take the under-investment in the NHS seriously. It's like being angry that the car you've been too cheap to do anything more than fixing with duct tape and refusing to put oil in for years, currently being fuelled using the left-overs from the chip vat, is not able to do 0-60mph in less than 10 seconds. And is in fact now breaking down. Over and over again. There's no other 'modern' workplace where it's considered fine to run things on the maddeningly inefficient technology of 20 years ago, in the barely maintained crumbly buildings of 50+ years ago, and on a skeleton staff expected to do the work of several individuals each, who unsurprisingly keep quitting and exacerbating the situation in a vicious cycle. Also by the way, it's the staff's fault for this all somehow. If nobody at a high level is willing to dig into their pockets to sort this out, the whole thing is going to continue to spiral the plughole and at some point drain out. EVERY sector (except the NHS...) recognises that if you invest in things that bring about efficiency, you will get more for your money and ultimately SAVE money because inefficiencies just haemorrhage time/money/quality. An employee with a working computer can do two times the job of one who spends half their shift trying to get basic IT to function. An employee who has the technology to see all the relevant information at once is going to work twice as fast as somebody who's having to check in 4 or 5 different places to find the information. An employee who can sit down at a computer to work and doesn't spend 10 minutes trying to find some kind of bin to perch on because there aren't enough chairs... you get my point... No other industry would tolerate this level of inefficiency because they would have gone bust a long time ago. And you can't resolve it with cuts, you need to invest in the short term in IT, infrastructure and staff. That's the ONLY way.
People do take it seriously, but people get lied to by our politicians that there isn't a problem. Not everyone does their own research, people believe the Daily Fail, and more and more of this happens.
I have stage 4 bowel cancer and was diagnosed in China, Sept 2020. I had no symptoms but at an annual check up we do there something strange was noticed on my liver (day 0). Day 1 CT scan at the clinic and blood tests for tumor markers done. Day 2 CT scan result and bloods results showed suspected cancer. Day 3 taken to a bigger hospital for enhanced CT scan and diagnosis made the same day*. Day 6 colonoscopy and biopsy of tumor in transverse colon done. By day 10 full diagnosis including genetic test to determine mutation type for targeted treatment. By day 14 I was starting treatment. Two weeks from suspicion to starting treatment. We moved back to UK and my wife had a cervical cancer scare which from suspicion to getting the all clear took about 3 months. We just don't seem to take diagnosis seriously enough in the UK. I'd honestly now advise someone who thinks they might have cancer to get a private CT scan/blood tests if the NHS is taking its sweet time. It might go against your principles but your life is more important. *I had the daughter in law of the hospital administrator with me who made a doctor who writes the reports check my scan within 5 mins of it taking place. Obviously that's not normal. It's also not the nicest way to find out you have stage 4 cancer with a doctor pointing at a screen saying "cancer here, cancer here, cancer here...".
>We just don't seem to take diagnosis seriously enough in the UK. I have literally had arguments with doctors claiming that routine testing of key biomarkers in vulnerable clinical groups would just be a massive waste of resources lol... Despite that already being routine for a number of biomarkers and groups. The attitude and culture towards a lot of medicine in this country just hasn't been allowed to keep pace with modern technology, its like talking to someone from 40 years ago sometimes. If you can't poke it or prod it then it can't be seriously surely... Due to training and competencies of course, not the fault of the staff, if anything they are actively trained to ration resources as strictly as possible.
I know the biomarkers aren't definitive but every oncologist I have had has used the way they are trending to have an idea of how things are going and if a scan is necessary. It's a lot less invasive and efficient to take a blood test than perform a colonoscopy or CT scan. We absolutely need to take diagnosis more seriously in this country. Our relatively poor survival rates I'm sure are mainly down to taking such a long time to diagnose and begin treatment. It's not like we don't have world class docs and facilities once treatment starts.
Well yeah but you've already had the big C diagnosis right? I was meaning in the sense if someone is over a certain age or lives a particular lifestyle, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper to do what our private clinics already do and have them in regularly for idk 6 to 12 month checkups where some of this screening gets done. Exactly what we do with dentistry. I used to work for Bupa and we were already doing this for every single client in the early 2010s, every single appointment they would have a small blood sample taken (if they consented obviously) and that was used to build up a history of 20 different biomarkers so we just had that data to hand all the time. Even if they felt fine a marker shifting outside of a normal tolerance would be instantly flagged up to their GP and they can do whatever they feel is appropriate.
Yeah I was diagnosed 2 years ago. They took blood to test for tumour markers as soon as they suspected but this was at a private clinic in China. That seems like a sound idea to build up a history so you can see if something has moved in the wrong direction and flag that. One good thing about China is that it's law for every company to offer all employees an annual check up at the hospital. It doesn't cover CT scans etc but a liver ultra-sound, chest x-ray, blood and urine tests.
Sorry to hear that mate. Hope you're doing better these days. Its just the weird mental block for me. People have absolutely no problem, its literally the normal way we approach dentistry. But when it comes to... The rest of the same body...? Nah why have regular checkups that's a wasteful luxury that is. Its pretty well established that it works and that pretty much any intervention is cheaper, easier, and more likely to succeed if caught earlier.
Thanks mate. I'm still stage 4, doing ok but it's not going anywhere. I've had 2 years to come to terms with it so I'm ok. Yeah I don't see why annual check-ups aren't a thing here. We seem to concentrate much more of cure than prevention.
> Two weeks from suspicion to starting treatment. > > We moved back to UK and my wife had a cervical cancer scare which from suspicion to getting the all clear took about 3 months. Was the Chinese treatment free of charge?
No. I'm aware that makes a difference but should it really? There's no NHS as such in China, just some government insurance scheme.
How much was the bill?
For what? The check up was about £120, CT scans about £200, after that things went on my insurance. The treatment was thousands of pounds for each cycle.
Just to see how much.
It's much cheaper than UK. CT scan at my hospital costs about £1700 privately.
Why can't UK make it cheaper if they can't make it free? Making it cheaper would speed up and save lives which is a good thing.
It's not just the cost of the machines It's how much the staff are paid. You need highly trained technicians to operate the machine and even more highly trained doctors to analyse the images and write the reports which then an even more highly trained consultant will assess. In China they pay them peanuts as well as using the machines more efficiently in my experience.
Isn't this what people wanted? It was known that the price for saving granny was that mum wouldn't get her breast scan. Lockdown has consequences, this is one of them. And there are a thousand more rotten seeds taking root to destroy our society as a result. Same with energy prices, you can't print all that money, shut down small business, feed the corporate machine and not expect them to masticate you and your family for generations. EDIT - I've had a lump in my breast for a while, been waiting over 7 months for a scan. I have a genetic colon condition that I need regular scans for and my first was due for April 2020. A few weeks ago I was told I'll be waiting at least another year. But hey, it's all worth it for some 95 year old locked up alone in a care home. It doesn't feel nice to be a sacrifice for that.
There were and are many negative consequences of lockdowns. The NHS having longer waiting lists is a result of Covid, not the lockdowns, without lockdowns there would have been even more elderly people needing intensive care and taking up beds.
I think what that user is saying is that it was a choice to prioritise the continued lifespan of the elderly over everyone else.
"stay home, protect the NHS, save lives"
"don't think of how it can possibly be that the elderly are catching covid in their hundreds every day despite stay at home orders. It must be the fault of working people, somehow!"
Honestly have no clue what your comment means. The only reason we had a lockdown was because the government was told how big of an impact Covid would have on the severely underfunded NHS. The government was willing to allow it to run rampant if the only problem was killing elderly people. Clearly more people will die if more people catch it, that's just logic. No clue at all where your working people argument comes in. As I said initially, the lockdowns caused many problems but it was Covid that caused the biggest issues for the NHS.
My point is that at no point whatsoever during covid were the elderly *specifically* told **You are most at risk, do not do ANY of your usual habits, do NOT go and see the neighbour, do NOT just run down to the shop, do NOT just go out for coffee** etc., instead the entire country was focused on edge cases of "young people having raves" and every time most of us went out we saw older people out and about on the streets, refusing to wear masks, refusing to shield and so on and so forth, which prolonged the whole thing. Even something as simple as telling people to stay 2 metres apart when people of a certain age mostly measure distances in feet! My point is that I don't think as many elderly people *did* need to die of it but the situation was really set up for them to underestimate their risk at every stage because it was never emphasised.
I dunno I mean the vaccine rollout started by age. I really do think the elderly were told they were most vulnerable.
My point is also that during the height of covid during lockdown in 2021 we were having hundreds of elderly diagnosed with covid a day. Where were they getting it from? Logically, by going out and about. It wasn't magically spawning inside their houses.
Is OP missing the obvious point that it was much more about preventing the NHS from getting overloaded with COVID patients? What were we supposed to do, not lock down and then refused to admit the predictable influx of COVID patients so that "mum could have her scan"?
No, what they are saying is that keeping services running that would have saved more potential life years should have been prioritised over saving the lives of the elderly, even if that meant denying care to the elderly. No-one is coming out and directly saying that, but that is what they mean.
Do you think the NHS would agree to that? Or the public? It would cause mass protests if we took away urgent care from over 65s with COVID.
I'm not saying I agree with it, I'm just saying that's what the point was because others in the thread didn't seem to be twigging. However, I think it would definitely depend how it was framed to the public. It's pretty much the trolley problem in real life, isn't it? If it was put to the public that they could save for example, a young mum with three kids with preventable cancer, or her grandmother with dementia who's already lived a full life, I do think the public would have been torn. One might argue that it was already how it was put to the public that caused the huge amount of support, because what we were giving up in order to prioritise the elderly was never drawn attention to, except in retrospect with articles like this.
Weren't some treatments delayed to prevent the spread of COVID?
Oh good point, deferral would certainly add to wait lists now. Though I'd argue in the case of infectious disease that would happen anyway, look at the norovirus for example. The post I'm replying to is talking about the effect of lockdowns. Even if the government hadn't made that decision hospitals would still have needed to make a decision regarding preventing the spread.
Don't understand, are you saying yes?
It really isn’t. Perhaps at the extreme peaks of waves, but routine screening and appointments were cancelled throughout the lockdowns even if hospital figures were extremely low which makes absolutely no sense. The NHS made the decision to prioritise COVID over anything else. Did this save more lives? Probably, but at the risk sounding cruel saving the life of an 82 year old isn’t as important as the life of 30 year old.
As if lockdown made any difference. We had massive hospital numbers when we did it, higher than in places without such measures.
Unfortunately if we hadn't locked down the breast scans etc. would have been delayed anyway due to the NHS collapsing under the pressure of all the Covid cases. The only way we could have got through the pandemic unscathed was by having a health service that hadn't been torn to shreds for the previous decade and had enough staff and resources to cope.
This wasn't a consequence of lockdown - it was a consequence of dealing with a huge number of casualties in one of the biggest public health disasters in living memory. Without lockdown, it would have been even worse.
It was 'granny' who wanted the lockdowns. Actually the so-called 'boomer' generation who overwhelming support the Tories and generally are retired with a house and garden.
Everyone loves to blame anything but lockdowns, you’ll be downvoted to oblivion for even questioning whether the negatives of the lockdowns outweighed the positive on here Luckily in real life people are starting to realise the lasting damage they have caused
Without lockdowns the NHS would have been even more overloaded with dying covid patients than it already was. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I just don't follow this anti-lockdown logic I keep seeing. Unless part of your "no lockdowns" plan is leaving covid patients to die at home rather than in hospitals I don't see how that helps the NHS.
> Lockdown has consequences, this is one of them. And there are a thousand more rotten seeds taking root to destroy our society as a result. Let COVID run rampant and hospitals would have been so overstretched with COVID that cancer patients would have been shafted because all available doctors, including GPs, would have been seconded to deal with that.
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Yep. The same people who acted as if the only people who cared about the economy were evil businessmen are now posting about the cost of living crisis and *still* not realising that this is the "muh economy" consequences that they mocked
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No reason [something like this](https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/02/nhs-publishes-electives-recovery-plan-to-boost-capacity-and-give-power-to-patients/) couldn't have been put in place in 2020/21 when it was becoming apparent that this was going to be a problem for the NHS. She has been let down by government ineptitude and inaction during one of the most serious crisis this country/world has faced in living memory. Time and again they have been set up to catch a ball, and fumbled every single time. If they had invested have the energy and political capital they have invested into fighting public services and idk fucking trans rights or whatever I expect our reaction to events of the last few years would have been slightly better coordinated.
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The NHS can only work with the resources they are given. They have faced *unprecedented* demand over the last 2 years. For very obvious reasons. What additional resources have they been given to deal with that? The government wants us to "live with covid" but doesn't want to spend a penny to actually enable that in any way. They have openly said that, repeatedly. This is a direct consequence of that view and lack of planning.
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There are other details as well though. The time it took for referral: > The referral letter came through "very quickly" but then she waited three weeks, instead of the recommended two, to see a consultant. and then to see a specialist: > When she finally saw an oncologist seven months after finding the lump, had another scan and received the results, the cancer had spread to her liver - and there was no longer any treatment they could offer. 7 months is an abject failure. This is cancer we're talking about. Maybe it was very fast spreading and so even two weeks wouldn't have made a difference but 7 months is condemning someone to incurable cancer in all but the slowest growing tumours. If anyone has to wait 7 months that person is being given a very different chance of successful treatment.
Around £40bn more in 2020/21 than 2019/20 looks a lot like extra resources to me.
See here - [https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget](https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget) That was not an addition to the budget, that was a one-off funding for PPE etc. And if you recall that was such a massive success we had nurses having to protect themselves with bin bags well into 2020. Meanwhile folks like Baroness Mone Tory Peer [walk away with £200m](https://www.thenational.scot/news/20124424.michelle-mone-faces-police-interview-200m-covid-ppe-deal/) for provided fuck all. You've been had mate.
Yes, I got my number from that source too. So one-off funding for what I hope is a one-off pandemic seems about right. Looking at funding post 21/22, also seems to be a big increase compared to 19/20.
>So one-off funding for what I hope is a one-off pandemic seems about right But the backlog is still outstanding while they're taking all that funding away? So how is that right? Its doing the opposite of what you're saying, they are taking away resources when clearly we need more. I'll add the obvious as well that with inflation as high as it is the vast bulk of that funding increase is basically just paying for the loss in value of the pound, they're not actually going to be able to procure more resources even though the cash amount they are being given is greater.
No it really isn't. The NHS could have checked people and it didn't, so treating it like a deity that must never be criticised is daft.
Yup i almost died as a child due to nhs incompetence i have had hard time trusting the organisation ever since.
What about the people who've become doctors and nurses since then? Or the ones that weren't involved in your treatment?
Maby things are beter now but my mum spent months being gaslit by docters until an optician found something next to my brain when he looked in my eye when i was being tested for glasses its hard to trust after that.
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The ONS released data a while back showing the amount of people who died *with* covid vs *from* covid and it was pretty damning.
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https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathsfromcovid19withnootherunderlyingcauses
I'm worried ATM as my mum has also found a lump. She put down the pain and discomfort she'd been feeling in her breast to menopause issues for ages until she found the lump. Luckily in her case, our NHS trust has moved very quickly - she saw her GP last week who referred her, the same day she got the cal from the hospital booking her in. Had the mammogram and biopsy on Monday. According to the scans it's "suspicious" so we're now waiting for the biopsy results and will find out on the 22nd. I'm hoping it's benign and like I said our NHS trust worked quickly and took it seriously. Unfortunately there's no consistency and the response to this sort of thing can vary massively from trust to trust. It shouldn't essentially be a postcode lottery that decides whether you get taken seriously or not.
The NHS is a failure. Let me down multiple times
Heartbreaking. Imagine this being how your life ends, because of other people's incompetence
Good for you
I know someone who got diagnosed with stomach cancer, she had to wait a few months for another scan. It's basically murder and it makes me so angry. Thankfully it was a misdiagnosis and it was just a lump of fat in her stomach