Well, just had an interesting conversation with my Mum which has done very little to bolster my faith in the overstretched NHS and its ability to cope with very much at all.....
Brief overview - Mum has terminal cancer - ovarian / omentum / peritoneal - and has gone downhill rapidly in the last few weeks. her abdomen is now size 20 on a size 12 frame. beginning of February she had a scan and fluid was seen ti be minimal - the mass is mainly tumour, but her increase could now be fluid so the macmillan nurses have arranged an appointment at 8.00 am next Tuesday to scan and maybe put in a drain and because she can no longer manage stairs and is housebound, she needs hospital transport and assistance which we cannot provide ourselves safely or obviously would.
She was given the appointment by phone after chasing it - fair enough they are busy and she accepts she's not the only patient. Following instructions she phoned the unit at the hospital where treatment is to be held, to get the number for transport. Hospital says the GP is her proper route. She rings the GP and is given another number to ring. She goes through this number, presses all the right buttons to get to a human, and is then told that this is the wrong number and has been since last July. She rings new number - goes though buttons again and during this process there is information given that she must have her hospital letter about the appointment to hand with all the right references in order to arrange transport. As yet she has no letter because the appointment has been confirmed by phone. After being number umptyplonk in the queue and no longer able to cope with the looping piped music for a fairly long period, she presses 2 for a call back. This is over two hours ago and she is still waiting - fair enough, we understand the pressures the system is under.
When Mum rang her Macmillan nurse to tell her all about this, said nurse was pretty gobsmacked and checked the number they provide for transport - it is the out of date one since last July. They have not been told about this - which is bonkers because my Mum can't be the only person in this situation in our large town.
Obviously this is not directly CV related but it does make me a bit wobbly about the conviction from official sources that the NHS is well prepared for the current situation.