I'm just interested to know how other people's experiences have been in terms of non-Covid hospital appointments, delays, cancellations, etc. I started experiencing extremely bad stomach pains and, ahem, other symptoms during the first month or so of the pandemic. It was something I could put up with, but when it didn't improve I started to worry. Getting a face-to-face GP appointment was impossible, although the practice were very efficient at booking a telephone consultation. The GP said it was probably IBS and recommended various dietary things, plus standard bloods, which showed I was very anaemic.
Fast forward a couple of months and nothing had really improved - and one day the pains got so bad that I went to a hospital UTC. I was very lucky that while I was there, they did a gastro referral without me needing to go back and request it from the GP.
I had a t/c with a consultant, who was very thorough and arranged a colonoscopy, endoscopy, MRI and all the rest of it, and I was able to have those done in August. We then had a t/c to follow up, but he said he really needed to see me face-to-face. It was scheduled for yesterday, but I then got a text saying that it had been changed to a t/c. I called up because I thought there was probably little point in holding the appointment for me, since it had only been booked so that the consultant could do a face-to-face. It turned out to be lucky that I called, because the automated text had been sent out in error!
To cut this long and waffling story short, the consultant is relatively certain that my symptoms have been caused by a rare genetic disorder. But he was only able to arrive at that conclusion based on observations which could only have been made in the face-to-face consultation, alongside the findings on the investigations. He was quite open about being frustrated about the limitations on face-to-face and said this was basically a classic example of why telephone, or even video consultation, isn't really an adequate replacement.
I actually consider that I've been very lucky - I didn't experience anything like the delays and cancellations that others have, and I'm just thankful that I rang and found out that the appointment was still happening in-person!! And luckily, the delay in being seen in person (relative to what would have happened in non-Covid times) won't result in any long-term issues for me. But it did make me think - that it is frustrating (and in some cases, devastating) for patients to have these delays on f2f because of the situation. And obviously frustrating for the staff in these departments too. It is such a pity that there is little that can be done to remedy it...