What a stupid f... mistake to stop treatment for cancer patients during lockdown

[alwayslosing]

Stopping the treatment for life threatening conditions was a stupid mistake that costs lives.
The stupid reason that the treatment can aggravate COVID 19 symptoms in case the patients gets it is a money making scam on behalf of the government.

Just watched the news about a lady that died because her cancer treatment was stopped. She could have lived longer and be with her boys. It made me so angry and frustrated that these people were not given the option to choose whether or not to continue the treatment. Choices were made for people and people died as a result.,

This is ridiculous...what kind of society are we living in? Is COVID 19 an excuse to stop treatments saving money and killing the sick?

This is not happening only in the UK but all over the world.

[quote frumpety]@DuineArBith the usual treatment is a vitamin B-12 injection every 3 months, where does she normally go for her injections and why wasn't she able to ?[/quote]
She was diagnosed just before lockdown, so had not had any previous injections and her B12 levels were at rock bottom. Her GP's surgery said they weren't able to offer treatments.

This postcode lottery of competent vs incompetent decision making is precisely why there is about to be a huge bureaucratic overhaul.

We have been going out and giving vit B-12 injections routinely to those on our caseload who are prescribed them. We have also taken on newly diagnosed people who require the loading dose during lockdown.

Great, but that hasn't been universal practice.

There is a Panorama documentary about this very subject on tonight on BBC1.

The problem with “getting back to normal” is the resources that

1. Covid hasn’t disappeared and patients and staff still need protection.
2. Extra capacity / staff / resources will be needed to tackle the backlog. Where are they coming from?

@RunningAwaywiththeCircus

B12 also stopped here. I had to complain to the practice to get mine reinstated (and even then she seemed to be more persuaded by my busy job than anything - presumably if I was just stacking shelves or a SAHM I could just continue plodding on while feeling like shit and they could continue withholding the simple and cheap cure?)

It’s the indecent haste with which GP’s have disappeared from public view that is irritating and dangerous. After spending years telling us that digital services were inferior because you couldn’t see/evaluate the whole patient, they have slammed their doors and will likely never open them again. Considering the level of GP dissatisfaction pre-COVID, I can’t see it going down well - they fail to spot enough serious conditions already.

Yes, all the while the move towards online/phone consultations has been praised as an efficient and long-needed development. But it happened far too quickly and has been conflated with not wanting to ‘bother’ the GP with small issues.

Agreed about gatekeeping receptionists.

I can’t get a normal appointment with my GP - they are operating a telephone appointment system where they could phone you at any time whatsoever during the day. I work in a school, so I haven’t made an appointment, because I can’t have a private telephone conversation while at work. By the school holidays, I will have waited 6 months to access the doctor, because they cancelled my appointment pre-lockdown. I think that’s really pretty crap, tbh. However, a family member has continued his cancer treatment as normal.

Ah I see @DuineArBith, so she hadn't even started her treatment yet. Was it that the GP practice was refusing to allow her to attend to have the injections/treatment ? Has she started the treatment now ?

My OH was mid treatment which was stopped. The entire oncology dept closed down. Phone calls were diverted to some call centre who just took messages and promised call backs which never happened. OH has just had his first blood test since March and if all is well, they "hope" to restart his treatment next month (assuming it's not too late!). The lack of information and complete absence of any support from the oncology dept over the last 3 months has been shocking. Upto March, he'd been having monthly blood tests, regular appointments with both the consultant and specialist nurses - all were apparently essential. Then absolutely bugger all for 3 months.

My dh has rheumatoid arthritis and in March he was advised to reduce his medication to try to increase his immunity. Unfortunately his pain became almost unbearable and had great difficulty with moving/using his hands so consultant said to resume meds as before and also px high dose steroids to help him get back to being pain free.

It was worth trying as it may have helped him if he had caught the virus but the pain was too much to manage. The doctors and nurses were always on hand to help though and have been great at replying to messages.

I saw the BBC news this morning. That lovely young mother that died. Kelly died after her cancer treatment was paused.

Another cancer sufferer expressed her anger that covid has dominated and stopped cancer treatments so people have died.

If does feel that covid trumps all - a young mother dies due to treatment being halted whilst the average age of covid deaths is in the 70's and 80's and many, many are at the end of their life and die WITH covid not from it.

@alwayslosing

I agree with you - covid is an excuse to stop everything including vital cancer treatments.

The numbers of people dying from all other causes seem to have been ignored or forgotten in the rush to make covid the one we all fear when really the vast majority of people shouldn't fear it at all.

Well tell you what OP next time there's a pandemic you can pop down to the hospital and work vicious long hours trying to replan every service, relocate many, do everything with staff sickness and anxiety through the roof and PPE requirements and supplies that change hourly. I'm sure you'll do great!

Some treatment stopped because Covid would have killed those patients quicker. Additionally chemo itself puts a certain proportion of patients in hospital. We had neither the beds nor the staff for that and nosocomial Covid infection was a real risk. If you want to blame somebody blame decades of underfunding not oncologists.

@user1497207191 that's awful, where in the country are you if you don't mind saying ?

Oncologist Professor Karl Sikora warned about this in April.

^In a usual April, we would normally see around 30,000 people diagnosed with cancer. I would be surprised if that number reaches 5,000 this month.
Coronavirus will steal the headlines, but cancer kills 450 people a day in the UK - there is no peak and the numbers aren’t coming down. Unless we act urgently, that number will rise. A group of oncologists, including myself, estimate that 60,000 cancer patients could die because of a lack of treatment or diagnosis.It’s absolutely right to stop the treatment for some cancers in the face of coronavirus. The immunosuppressive effects of the treatment would put the patient at risk as their immune system is significantly weakened. But for others, a delay of more than a month would have a negative impact on the future prognosis^.

My friend was diagnosed with cancer just before lockdown and started chemotherapy shortly after. She has been very impressed with the way she has been dealt with. We are in Scotland if that makes a difference.

money making scam ?

It gives the impression that the GP practice is out of bounds and a ‘last resort’ type of place.

Totally agree. I had to speak to a GP on the phone first and only then was given an appointment. The surgery is like Fort Knox, you have to ring the buzzer and give your name before someone unlocks the door. You are directed to sit in a specific seat and the GP sees you wearing full PPE. On one hand they are saying "come and see us, we're open" and on the other hand they are giving out clear STAY AWAY vibes.

Lots of older people are just not contacting the GP. My parents don't have email or smartphones. They can't do video appointments and can't email a picture of a weird lump or rash. Personally i think there is a balance to be struck - in most cases i'd be happy to "see" a GP over video. But agree that the change has been far too rapid and the message of "protect the NHS" has been interpreted by many as "do not use the NHS unless you have Covid".

My chemo/rads started in lockdown. 27 April I started. Was diagnosed early March so my trust carried on as normal.

@labyrinthloafer

I would like to know what happened in other countries - was so much health care stopped there too?

I feel the fact so much was stopped shows how close the the wire the NHS is.

I do not criticise the NHS, I believe it is hugely underfunded and the obsession with privatising has made it less efficient, not more.

Our healthcare system is not that great. Not due to the staff in it, but due to the last ten years of underfunding.

I'm in Germany and my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer in February. All scans and chemotherapy have gone ahead as planned. The hospital said that all cancer treatment including surgery was / is not affected by COVID19. I believe this was the case countrywide.

The NHS are not a load of numpties making bad decisions. Every decision is a risk assessment. Yes sometimes things go wrong, they are human, not all decisions turn out to be right ones, but they rightly, legally protect themselves every time by making that unemotional risk assessment. It is likely that the final decision involved both NHS professionals and government. The decision was probably not made to make money as you imply, in all likelihood it was to save the most years of life based on the information (which was sketchy) that they had at the time. Your anger is a waste of your own energy and unsympathetic to those who bear the weight of those decisions which cannot always turn out well, because real life isn't like that and a pandemic is a far worse situation than anyone plans for. And before you say that the magic "they" should have planned for it, be aware that if they had, the cost would have been diverted from some other useful cause, maybe many many cancer treatments.

Does anyone know if treatments were effected in other European countries that went into lockdown ? It would be interesting to know how they managed things during lockdown.

There will be some people who have been condemned to death based on a risk that may not have happened, instead of having the choice, they were refused treatment in case they caught covid, vs something that was going to definitely kill them. Of course that's disgraceful, but catching it in hospital and dying might look bad for the NHS so...

I live in Wales and tbh, even before Covid, the waiting times to be seen are already so long that people will be dying as the delays are the difference between treatable or not. My friend is an oncologist and she gets patients on the phone crying to her begging to be seen sooner because they know the long waiting time to be seen could lead to them dying.