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.

Let's all live in the fear that we might get Covid then. Erm.. for that lady yes! Her consultant had been told that her chances of dying from COVID were heightened by her arthritis meds - my mother was told the same.

A friend had a breast scan, diagnosis, treatment, second scan and immediate all clear, all during lockdown.

The "It's a money making scam" is the sort of conspiracy lunacy my father comes out with. Utter bollocks!

Oops cross posted with @labyrinthloafer !

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.

I don't think this has anything to do with it.

Firstly most cancers affect old people, just like covid. Young mothers are a small subset of cancers and obviously will attract news coverage.

Secondly, I'm not sure really what you're suggesting, but if medical staff are infected with covid-19, then do you really think they should be treating cancer patients?

Clearly there have been hundreds of thousands or millions of cancelled appointments and procedures, but it seems very strange to suggest that your ear checkup or whatever has somehow been displaced by someone in ICU with covid-19.

Covid-19 affects hospitals ability to perform their normal number of routine procedures.

@totallyinapproppriate do you not have the two week wait rule in Wales ?

My mum's partners treatment was continued on the same schedule as usual - he was lucky.

The Govt told NHS trusts to empty hospitals of the elderly and get them into care homes, as many treatments as possible stopped too.

Johnson decided that the NHS could not be "overwhelmed" as we saw in Spain and italy, so capacity had to be found.

My brother has, what he thinks, is some sort of prostate problem, he did go to the GP (zoom) but was told, no tests or screening is being done & that is still the case, so the lies from Hancock and Johnson that the NHS is waiting for patients is bollocks but lets make sure the pubs can open, ahead of schools, face to face GP appts and life saving treatments.

@frumpety

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 ?

Yes, and she couldn't get them anywhere else locally. She has started treatment now, fortunately, but even so she had to push for it hard against receptionists banging on about the Covid risk. The problem is that the damage suffered through lack of treatment is irreversible.

I know one person who had radio therapy and one who had a biopsy and an “all clear” during lockdown.

@SockYarn

I saw my GP on Friday - for something fairly minor and non-emergency. He said that the number of excess deaths is going to remain higher than average for years because they've never been so quiet. People are not seeing the doctor for lumps, bumps, changes in their body and other issues which could indicate serious problems. Delays in diagnosis and treatment can push a treatable cancer into a non-treatable one.

It's a scandal and the NHS isn't reverting back to normal quickly enough.

Didn’t the excess death rate drop back to just below the 5 year average last week?

I'm in London. My friend was diagnosed with cancer in April and has been receiving chemotherapy.

My DH had a face to face appointment with his GP on Friday and has been given a hospital appointment next Friday.

There are certainly issues, but it's not been bad everywhere.

@pandafunfactory

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.

All that love for the NHS has evaporated pretty darn quickly, hasn't it? As panda says the scandal is not that NHS trusts are on a "money making scam" (WTF) but that they haven't been funded properly for a very long time. Andrew Lansley's "reforms" in 2012 didn't help.

I work with cancer patients. A lot of my palliative clients have had treatment stopped. Some don't want to risk going anywhere near the hospitals, others are just bewildered as to why they have had no treatment for months. Some it is just too dangerous for them to have toxic chemotherapy that is going to lower their blood counts. We seem to have lost an awful lot of patients recently who have only just been referred to us.

My DH was denied access to his GP and A&E. By the time A&E begrudgingly sent him for an x-ray it was too late. He was denied access to diagnostic tests and treatment and one of the hospitals that did this was the Marsden, they most certainly weren't carrying on with a near normal service.
DH paid the ultimate price and we weren't even allowed to be with him. I saw him twice in three weeks and had to fight for that.
Sadly he is just one of thousands who have or will die from Covid-19 neglect. Meanwhile the Nightingale hospitals sat empty and useless.

@StopGo From the bottom of my heart I am so sorry for your loss. Thoughts go out to you ❤️

I agree with OP, except for calling it a money making scam. I think that was mis-phrased. It was a way to cut costs and rebrand the NHS as the National Covid Service.

Unfortunately that rebranding was so heavily peddled by the media, along with the government messages of don't use the NHS unless you have Covid 19 that it has gone far too far. Back at the start of lockdown people were even told not to go to the GP or hospital unless they were blue and floppy, if then.

My own parents have been lucky to make it through lockdown alive. Both have had serious health emergencies (not Covid 19 related) and both were utterly terrified of going near a hospital until there was no choice and they were rushed in by ambulance.

Their GP has been hopeless. Refused to go out to any of his patients and always sent paramedics, who were all lovely and helpful but did say that they were now being expected to do the job of GPs, who take no risks themselves but happily pass it on (to them as paramedics).

It went way too far. It seriously needs to regain a semblance of normality. Non Covid emergencies are still happening and people are dying because of that too.

@StopGo

My DH was denied access to his GP and A&E. By the time A&E begrudgingly sent him for an x-ray it was too late. He was denied access to diagnostic tests and treatment and one of the hospitals that did this was the Marsden, they most certainly weren't carrying on with a near normal service. DH paid the ultimate price and we weren't even allowed to be with him. I saw him twice in three weeks and had to fight for that. Sadly he is just one of thousands who have or will die from Covid-19 neglect. Meanwhile the Nightingale hospitals sat empty and useless.

So sorry to read this.

I saw that lady on the BBC news OP. Broke my heart. Just so very sad. Have been thinking of her and her family.

A friend of ours died. She was having cancer treatment, which was reduced significantly. I suspect she would have died anyway, and the treatment was to prolong her life. As it was she died in a hospice. Her husband arrived half an hour before she died, but she had not seen her (adult) children for weeks beforehand. She tested negative for Covid just before she died. So many sad deaths.

StopGo, I am so sorry!

It is a scandal. It has gone far too far and lasted far too long.

I finished chemotherapy just before lockdown. My surgery and radiotherapy went ahead as planned. I've been treated at the Marsden and they have done phone appointments wherever possible, and ask patients not to turn up early for appointments when they do have to go in. I know they have also been taking on surgery for patients who would otherwise have been treated at other hospitals.

DHs 80 year old aunt would, but for covid, have had further treatment for her cancer. This didn't happen, she went downhill quickly. I don't blame the NHS staff who looked after her at the end - they were good, humane people doing their job - but she was, in effect, euthanised.

Clearly some people have been receiving appropriate treatment - which begs the question why others clearly haven't - not even diagnosis.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-could-mean-extra-35-000-deaths-from-cancer-2zmknbvdv?shareToken=0c1b3d969a13bd14687175351218ba78

It didn't all stop, it was risk vs benefit.

You have short memory, in March/April we really did think covid infections would be widespread and likely kill someone on chemo.

@DuineArBith glad to hear she has managed to get started and hopefully she will start to feel some benefit soon. What worries me most about your friends scenario, not least the witholding of a simple and quick and very cheap treatment, is that she had to really push for it, how many others would have the ability to do that ?

I'm in Ireland, and a relative has only just re-started his cancer treatment which was suspended in March. His oncologist basically said to him: if you're on this treatment and you contract this, you will die: you can go a few months without it having a serious effect on your prognosis, we'll keep monitoring you, and you need to strictly cocoon. He has a lot of faith in this consultant who has treated him for years. I think the problem is, for many people postponing their treatment may shorten their life. But for many of those same people, getting Covid 19 while undergoing the treatment they were on would have meant almost certain death from Covid, so the balance has to be made about sending someone into a hospital environment where they have an increased chance of getting it vs the likely effect on their prognosis going ahead. I do know another family member whose treatment went ahead so I do think they were making informed individualised decisions.

What has got press coverage here is the low numbers of people going to GPs for referrals, and the knock on effect this will have. I don't think its entirely fair to blame gatekeeping: my surgery has been doing phone consultations and if they think you need to be seen they get you to come in and you ring the door and are let in, which sounds similar to what people are describing in the NHS. They're discouraging what used to be a waiting room full of people coughing and spluttering. But I think quite a lot of cancer referrals come from someone casually mentioning 'oh while I'm here could you look at this mole/bump/etc,' many of people put those visits off in 'normal times'. We still haven't resumed screening programmes though and I am pretty outraged I can go shopping and out for dinner but can't get an overdue smear test.

I think he knock on effect on our health service will last for years, but I'm honestly not sure all that much different could have been done.

I believe the danger is also on any referrals that were missed. Those early stage interventions. Anecdotally I know that my friend with stage 4 has continued treatment throughout but that's obviously just one patient.