I am actually in floods over PoW news

[LindaPen]

But not the way you think.

DH was diagnosed with kidney cancer during lockdown. Had the kidney removed and there was talk of preventative chemotherapy. They decided he didn't need it. A year later he was dead.

I have often wondered (but tried not to think too hard about it) whether that decision would have been different if he'd been someone important, or treated privately and somehow this news has "proved" that. I should have fought for him.

Obviously wish PoW well, but this is hard 😪

Money can buy lots of things.
Imagine you have last stage cancer and can't afford even proper bed. Nevermind private counselling for your kids or some "to do" things with them to make some memories.
There are lots of "luxuries", which CAN MAKE YOUR BATTLE WITH CANCER WAYYY EASIER IF YOU CAN AFFORD THEM. My MIL bought some special gels for her mouth as it was like sahara and it was the only way she was able to speak with someone on her last days. No way you could afford them while on sick pay and these are not prescribed by NHS.

That wasn't what I meant. No matter how much money you have, it doesn't always mean you can be cured.
I know the King and PoW have more than most people, but it's not a guarantee.

I'm sorry for your loss

But please don't overthink it.

A lot of this is semantics.

The word "preventative" is just a clinical opinion. It's a clinical decision.

Having "preventative chemotherapy" does not guarantee prevention of the cells spreading, it's doesn't guarantee life.

When my mum had cancer she was having surgery - then decided it wasn't needed. Then immunotherapy showed it wouldn't be beneficial when she went to the appointment. Being private or "someone" wouldn't have changed any of that.

My friends DW was "clear" after her ovarian cancer in the 80's including full hysterectomy. She died of "ovarian cancer" in the 2000's after a stray cell(s) multiplied locally having been non detectable for decades.

The truth is cancer is a fucking cunt of an illness that has no real clear trajectory and takes people in the most horrific way and treatment is a guessing game.

That's why I want to throttle people for using the word "fight". Everyone with cancer fights it. But sadly it's not a fight where you get a choice whether you win or not.

My dp had cancer 5 years ago. His private healthcare told him quite openly that the only difference going private would be having tea in a china cup instead of an NHS mug. Our local oncology dept is a regional centre and all NHS and private treatment is done there. Private patients have nicer rooms afterwards but the medical stuff is NHS.

SURE, I would expect a premium service to the RF but it really does depend what processes get you to the point of diagnosis, how good and efficient the pathway to that point is.

Unfortunately all the money in the world cannot prevent poor outcomes from all cancers. I have a friend who has always gone private, immediate referrals etc. Went with stomach probs and has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer with 6 months prognosis.

What a stupid fucking post.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

My dad was diagnosed with kidney cancer after months of being dismissed by doctors, told it was a pulled muscle, then a UTI, then kidney stones. By the time he was diagnosed, his kidney had perforated and spread cancer cells all over his body. He suffered horribly because of incompetence.

I've spent years wondering if the outcome could have been different had he received proper and timely treatment, but even with 'perfect' treatment it's so difficult to predict what cancer will do. I'm really sorry. It's such an awful thing to be left to live with.

I would give almost anything to spend just 10 more minutes with my dad.

So sorry for your loss. I'm glad Kate has the best possible care, but it is sad that the same level of care (and speed of care) just isn't available for everyone. I want to make it absolutely clear that I think she deserves every bit of treatment - it's just that everyone else does, too!

Agree with all of this.

I can't help wondering if those reporting on the hearsay and gossip about POW - including the BBC - spent some time doing proper investigative journalism about cancer research, or you know some pieces on the top cancers and what to look out for, and allowed the main cancer charities the airtime given over to endless gossip, then it would be a much better use of time.

It also might mean those charities saving money spent on advertising / awareness so more money actually could go to research.

Oh my gosh!

I am so sorry. They’d my worst
nightmare

if you ever need a stranger to speak too I’m here. X

I think people on here saying “drs sometimes make mistakes” haven’t lost their dh before the age of 60 because of a shitty cba attitude off a surgeon who made a mistake. Twice.

They have enough education to not make poor decisions. Airline pilots have less education and we don’t have Boeing 747’s randomly crashing with the pilot walking away saying “sometimes pilots make mistakes lol”

Is that the best medics can really do? “Well I was wrong, go home and spend time with your family”

So very sorry for you and your loss.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of known cases in the public domain where the NHS killed people through negligence. Multiple inquiries, multiple reports, multiple coroner findings

There are some obscene posts on here making out that if someone died due to NHS failures it was just their time to die because the NHS is perfect. That's right out of the NHS's own playbook for covering up its negligence - did you miss the maternity scandal where patients were blamed by the NHS for their own deaths when it was actually the NHS's fault?

As for those posters trying to make out that the RF are being treated under some cut-price Bupa policy and therefore having to worry about policy exclusions and authorisations, that's just fucking brainless. Are people really stupid enough to think that's how medical care for the future queen works, or just being deliberately disingenuous?

The RF don't have to worry about dying due to negligence and indifference then it being covered up. They have no fear of losing their job, their home and being made bankrupt because of being too sick to work - the type of stress that makes it harder for the body to fight infections and heal, so has a direct impact on health outcomes for people plunged into poverty and financial insecurity by cancer.

"You're not alone" is bullshit.

I’m not sure anyone was suggesting the RF have a cut price bupa policy. The comments about private not always being the answer were in the thread to reassure OP and address her regret that going private might have changed things. And it might have.

But the point is it isn’t a panacea, it can be fraught with its own shortcomings and may very well not have changed anything so she shouldn’t torture herself on that front.

I think of people like Steve Jobs still dying of cancer whenever conspiracy theorists start claiming there is a cure for cancer that’s being hidden from us. There’s no doubt that the rich can access more clinical trials in other countries that we would have to fundraise for or pay for drugs that we can’t afford but at the end of the day rich and powerful people still die from cancer.

I am so sorry to read this OP and my heart truly aches for you. My husband was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic cancer. He’s had some chemo to try to slow things down and a few weeks ago radiotherapy.
I am looking across the room at him now, asleep in an armchair from the drugs he’s currently taking for pain relief and it is devastating. I am watching him fade away before my eyes and there is nothing I can do.
He is a possible candidate for Lutetium (177Lu) vipivotide tetraxetan, the treatment that Andy Taylor is having, but it isn’t being made available to the nhs.
We don’t have the assets to fund £200,000 and I feel useless and guilty that we can’t get him this treatment. He served his country for over 25 years and veterans charities don’t want to know. He is a shadow of the man he once was. He can barely walk and is wracked with pain, I spend my time crying in the shower out of sight of our DCs. Cancer is devastating and I hope that you can find some peace, I am so very sorry to you and to every other family that finds themselves battling this disease and the aftermath of it.

I know of three people, my own DH included, who were diagnosed with cancer too late to do anything about it because their GP failed to recognise the symptoms and refer on. In my DH’s case he saw the GP numerous times about shoulder pain and other symptoms which the GP simply didn’t connect and which I now know to have been red flags which should have resulted in a fast track referral on suspicion of lung cancer. The final time he went to the surgery about the symptoms he was sent away with painkillers and a referral for physio for a trapped nerve - the GP hardly looked up from the prescription pad.

Two weeks later DH wasn’t very well - coughing and wheezing quite badly. GP examined him and listened to his chest, pronouncing it clear - advised there was a virus going round and antibiotics weren’t appropriate. It was only two days later DH was admitted to hospital after collapsing - the A&E doctor said he had one of the worst cases of pneumonia he had ever seen and asked me why we hadn’t had our doctor out. When I told him DH had seen him a couple of days earlier he shook his head and walked away without comment.

Eventually they established that his shoulder pain and other symptoms were caused by a tumour sitting on a nerve - it was large enough to have been seen on a simple x-ray, which was deemed unnecessary. The cancer wasn’t diagnosed until after he had collapsed and was admitted to ITU and put on life support. He never regained consciousness and died a week later.

Part of the problem is the one appointment for one complaint policy. No opportunity to discuss other symptoms which may have presented a fuller picture suggestive of cancer. Our surgery operated that policy at the time, and the new surgery I moved to after the event also still operates this policy. It’s a ten minute appointment to discuss one complaint - anything additional and you need to make another appointment. GP’s are the main gateway to secondary care and I think the UK’s early cancer diagnosis rates reflects the lack of any cohesive policy in this area - my own experience was that of a lack of expertise and failure to listen to my DH’s reporting of symptoms. The consultant in ITU told myself and DH’s family that a large proportion of cancers are only discovered when patients are admitted to hospital for other reasons - many of them reporting having seen their GP’s who didn’t feel the need to refer on.

The GP system in this country is massively failing so many people.
They are the gateway to specialist treatment and they operate under the principle that if you hear hooves assume horses, not zebras.
So when people present with symptoms they automatically jump to the most common reasons and this means early diagnosis is lost due to the reluctance to refer on for tests the first time someone presents with symptoms. ( I believe they also have a budget for diagnostic testing, so will only refer on if treatments like painkillers, rest, change of diet, time, etc have failed to work. Or the symptoms are so blatantly obvious red flags they have no choice.
Unfortunately, a lot of cancers don't present with obvious symptoms, they can be vague, like bloating or indigestion, change in bowel habits etc, so patients are sent away with antacids, and it's not until the patient has either deteriorated more or is failing to get relief that further investigations are done and by then it can be too late.
Add to that the fact that it's so difficult to get a GP appointment that people put it off as long as they can or are so disheartened by being ignored/sent away that they avoid going back with the same problem.
I,m not sure how we can fix this without a massive increase in funding and screening to try and catch cancers early when they are more treatable.
The current staffing issues are only adding to this problem.

But there’s a budget in hospitals too. My returned cancer was missed by hospital specialists because, one, they dismissed my symptoms, and, two, they didn’t want to pay for an ultrasound scan.

The rapid failure of the GP system in the last few years has been scary to watch. It wasn't perfect prior to this but if you had something serious you would get seen quickly. Now it's all hanging on the phone for an age, getting through, getting offered something so far ahead that it's pointless for what's wrong with you. Not getting appointments to see anyone but to speak on the phone, to do online stuff and so little of it feeling like what you want/need.

I'm currently lucky because I am undergrowing cancer treatment I'm a priority so I can sometimes get seen/spoken to on the same day. I really fear for the future health of this country though. If it's so difficult to see a GP what hope do people who need to be seen quickly, to be referred and to get treatment quickly have? Over the past 14 years it's been heartbreaking to watch the slow then quicker decline of the NHS.

The kind of arse who doesn’t have the personal experience of seeing a loved one go through the cancer journey, as a lot of us here clearly have. If they had, they would realise that we would give everything we have for a just few more minutes with them.

Let's not forget that the King and his family not only have access to the very best healthcare, he is also the head is the CofE and as such must enjoy special favour with the Creator, and it appears even that isn't enough.

@pam290358 and @reesewithoutaspoon echo experiences I have witnessed with friends and family.
I lost two dear friends last year, both to gynaecological cancers , who had been repeatedly dismissed by their GPs; until the realisation that it was too late.
I had cancer just before lockdown. I was extremely lucky that the GP I saw first , recognised the possible reasons for my symptoms, and moved me on up the chain.

My own mother was not so lucky as her GPs worked through some sort of symptom ladder/ knock down, before referring her.

It really is a lottery. (All in Scotland btw)

Edited to add: I am so sorry for your loss Op

I agree with you so much in so many ways.

Firstly, the way in which symptoms are separated off is really damaging. It causes silos of thinking and the real picture is obscured. FIL had a heart issue that cardiologists couldn’t get to the bottom off. So basically they stopped looking.

A few years later, he has issues with food coming back up. And it turns out he has a rare form of stomach cancer disease and the tumour is blocking the entrance of the stomach. One of the early warning signs of cancer his type of cancer is heart issues, basically due to that type of cancer affecting the nervous system.

And then just the dismissive attitude towards patients, not listening to them or trusting that they know when something is going on in their bodies.

My neighbour had breast cancer in her fifties and so was always very vigilant about a possible return. That to me is a sensible attitude.

When she went to the GP repeatedly with abdominal pain, GP repeatedly tell her that it’s “just her anxiety”.

Neighbour eventually pushes and is referred to local hospital. Consultant there refuses to see her, saying he’s already seen her as part of her original treatment and she’s been given the all clear so he doesn’t need to see her again. This despite her having new and different symptoms and despite it being several years later.

Then the pandemic happens and it’s impossible to see or speak to a doctor.

Turns out that was actually the thing that saved my neighbours life, at least for now. The new practice manager ends up speaking to my neighbour on the phone triage one day, she actually listens and something rings a bell.

So she went through my neighbours records, writes a report saying she is concerned and this leads to my neighbour being referred my neighbour to the bigger hospital slightly further away.

Neighbours abdomen is full of tumours. They can do chemo and radiotherapy to prolong her life but she is going to die.

If the GP and consultant had listened to her when she approached them years earlier and not just dismissed and gaslit her she could well have had different options, a different outcome.

@LindaPen I'm so sorry and sadly I agree that there is definitely a two tier system. The PoW gets the best of everything and although I acknowledge the sadness of it all I find it nauseating the amount of attention this will get to a woman and family that get the best of everything.