Mum who 'couldn't see doctor for months' during lockdown now told she has cancer

[LordLancington]

I think this unfortunate story is the kind of thing that will become increasingly common if we don't control infection rates.

All the people saying 'oh, but you're unlikely to die of corona virus' are right. It will instead be people like this lady who die when they can't access the medical support they need because of the NHS being overwhelmed by 'non lethal' covid cases (which still take up a bed and resources).

I'm certainly not a corona moaner, but I think the people arguing for us to 'just get on with life' are deluded.

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"So patients are not supposed sit by the phone and not move all day waiting for the Important Doctor's call?"

There's no need for snark. If you'd bother to read the rest of the thread you can see how much stress the GPs are currently under. It depends on the practice your with but making yourself available for a phone call that you've arranged I think is a pretty much part of the deal. I always put in bookings if a patient is not going to be available for a certain point during the day but things change so quickly at the surgery it can be really hard to give a definite time. It's not because you're not considered important enough or the doctors think they're important.

And most people have things called mobile telephones. Which means they can move. Yes I can do snark too

The NHS has been running ragged all summer trying to catch up on the backlog. Unfortunately in a massively underfunded health service that is not possible. You voted for no spare capacity, you got it. You voted to pare the NHS to the bone, you are still getting a lot more than you pay for.

Increasing bed capacity will do very little because there are no staff to cover the beds. This government cut funding for trainee nurses, student doctors pay £36,000 in fees and more in living costs to train to be constantly complained about for not doing the impossible.

You want to do something useful - complain about the government not funding a vitamin D trial. Because that is a very promising treatment that is not even being tested in this country. If it was maybe we wont be in this position now.

I was disgnosed with cancer the day before lockdown, then heard nothing again until the end of august, and I just had my op and awaiting some results to see what, if any, further tratment I need. I was just given increasingly strong painkillers by my gp and told to get on with it.

It have been fairly lucky that my cancer didn't seem to progress and I had a cancer with a very high recovery rate. Lots of people won't have been as lucky as me. Its very scary.

Maybe it depends on post code. I got a face to face appointment to check out a lump, and then reffered to a hospital where I had a mammagram. So things were still happening.

The NHS has been running ragged all summer trying to catch up on the backlog. Unfortunately in a massively underfunded health service that is not possible. You voted for no spare capacity, you got it. You voted to pare the NHS to the bone, you are still getting a lot more than you pay for

This. People in the UK want it both ways: low taxes, but great social care and health care. Well, that's not possible. You have voted for years for effective cuts to the NHS. Healthcare costs rise by 4% a year on average - greater than inflation because of new technologies and treatments. For most of the last decade, the NHS has received a 1% annual uplift. That is a massive cut in real terms.

As an HCP, I have given thousands of hours of unpaid overtime to the NHS. I have been assaulted, insulted, missed countless weekends and family events to do my job. I have given my all. I am sick of being treated as a scapegoat for NHS under-funding.

I get really cross with the system. I read again and again that people can't get a GP appointment. Yet where I live I call my GP at 8.30am and I book a telephone appointment for that day. I just have to ask and explain what for. Or I can book one in advance which takes 3-4 weeks. Yet it seems so different in other areas. How is this fair? I live in SE so hardly rural.

Massive health inequalities

Every GP surgery is an individual business and every GP surgery has some level of choice as to how they deliver their services. Thankfully my surgery has been fantastic - they are in a lovely big new purpose built surgery where it's been easy to deliver some services safely, and they've done their best to provide face to face. But I work in the healthcare sector and I've heard awful stories about refusal of appointments, absolutely no face to face appointments, people being expected to come to the surgery front door then ring 'on their mobile phone' to to be let in (what about those with no mobile, no credit etc).

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow I have said time and again I would pay more taxes for the NHS but if so I expect it to turn into a modern customer service orientated organisation that is well managed and deals with poor performance.

I've been battling all of lockdown with bleeding. Pains in my pelvis. Anemia. Weight loss. Heavy periods. Nausea. Hormones are all over.

GPS have not seen me once. I've had a smear though and a blood test. They call me anxious now. But finally three days ago she said she would refer me. She did it with attitude and refused to send me for a scan whilst waiting for what she claimed was going to be a long referral as covid is stopping services. She also told me I would have to travel. Said they can do a scan when they get around to it. I've been having pains in my ovary and I bleed when I get a pain in the area. Yet she doesn't have any interest in getting me scanned.

I'm a 31 year old mum of two children under 5. I've not been able to take my child to school as I cant predict pain, weakness and heavy bleeding days.

During lockdown our family had these experiences of NHS services.

Mum had an op to remove cancer from neck.
Husband had his six monthly cancer investigations.
Daughter 1 had a phone consultation with GP and received treatment.
Daughter 2 had a phone consultation and a subsequent face to face with the doctor.

A friend also had his treatment for a brain tumour. Sadly he died during lockdown, but that would have happened anyway.

No untreated issues at all. I know that it varies from area to area, but medical issues are being dealt with. They won't be if we are overwhelmed with covid patients.

Dds cardiology appointments have been cancelled and a neighbours hip replacement op has been cancelled several times.

We have no idea if dds heart is working as it should be and my neighbour is now in a wheelchair because he can no longer walk without it. I can hear him upset in his garden sometimes when the pain is getting on top of him.

Friend is still getting her cancer treatment which is the only good thing out of the 3 situations.

It depends on the practice your with but making yourself available for a phone call that you've arranged I think is a pretty much part of the deal

It would be easier to ‘make myself available* if I was given a rough idea of when the GP will call, rather ‘than it’ll be sometime this morning’. Yes I have a mobile, but I’m also working and would fit meetings around the call.

There are a number of reasons why services shut down in the first wave and not all of them apply now

1. non- essential services were shut so that staff could redeploy to Covid wards. If cases rise this will happen again

2. services shut because hospitals and GP surgery's were major hubs for catching COVID. Sitting in a waiting room or being on a ward with an infectious person guaranteed you'd catch it. They were shut t stop spread
   This doesn't need to happen as much now because we are trying to have COVID secure services, green areas etc. If cases don't rise too high we can keep other stuff open more safely now with testing

3. cancer chemotherapy in particular stopped because making someone immune suppressed increased the risk of them getting COVID in addition to them already having cancer and coming to a high risk environment. In some cases where the treatment was intended as life prolonging not curative the risk: benefit swung in favour of NOT having treatment because the risk of dying of COVID whilst immune suppressed was high.
   Again this need not apply if we can keep Covid secure areas.

Overall if we keep cases low that is the best way to ensure other services can operate albeit in a different way. The days of sitting on a GP waiting room have stopped and should stop.

@Parker231 Same in our surgery. I think what happened at the beginning was people were often too scared to go and see the GP. You wouldn’t have had any trouble getting through to us - phone calls virtually stopped completely for a month. It was really concerning. The hospital cancelled most non-emergency treatments. I process the post and there were hardly any hospital letters for two or three months . The GPs triaged by phone and saw people where necessary - it actually worked very well and was very popular with patients. Referrals went ahead, although we were aware hospitals were holding non-urgent ones (had to keep a list our end to make sure none went missing when things restarted).

Yes, the GPs avoided seeing patients where possible, but it wasn’t because they didn’t want to. At that point it was the fear that if all the clinical staff got Covid, there would be no-one to care for our 7,000+ patients. It was a very uncertain time and no-one knew how quickly it was going to spread.

I think the pp who suggested that already crap surgeries got worse and good ones did well hit the nail on the head.

One news report said that from March to (I think) September, a single hospital trust had cancelled 45,000 out-patient appointments. That's a heck of a lot to try and catch up on.

No response from our GP at all between April and August. Fortunately nothing serious and OH managed to get a prescription for antibiotics from his dentist for something non-tooth related. In September the GP surgery sent a text message to each of us on different days saying 'We believe you may have registered away from our surgery recently. Please respond Mistake. if this is an error and you would like to remain registered. Otherwise please respond Leave. Thanks' Neither of us have done anything that would imply we're leaving. The mind boggles.

A similar thing happened to my sister. She wasn’t diagnosed until aug/ Sept however once diagnosed she was whisked in quickly. She has been very ill though. I can’t see her normally I would have travelled up but not in these times. I wish I could do more for her.

I don't understand why GP surgeries are only offering phone appointments. The GP surgery plays no role if you have Covid symptoms - you are either self-isolating or in a hospital ward. Why are GP surgeries different from other 'customer facing' services or retailers that are staying open?

It must depend on the area. My SE services have continued almost at a normal level except that first GP appointment is a phone triage. Certainly we've had people referred to investigations throughout the past 8 months. And anecdotally my friend up north in Liverpool has had his cancer treatment continued throughout.

I'm just at the end of a ten day hospital stay and it's solely as a result of not being able to get into my GPs.

Hospital staff here are very vocal about the fact they don't feel GPs are pulling their weight. In my area they aren't even seeing patients, it's phone appointments only. There was a two month wait for a booked appointment or ring early for an emergency slot. I just couldn't get in and now here I am. Taking up a bed for over a week and putting more strain on exhausted staff

Whilst I’ve had excellent treatment for a gynae problem at my local hospital, this was referred by the GUM clinic I attended (as this was more accessible than the GP)
I have a long standing thyroid condition and usually have it checked every 6 months but it’s 11 months since my last test and I can feel it’s off balance so did an eConsult and finally got a form out of them. Few days later, a phone call to say the doctor needs to speak to me about the test result. But sorry, the doctor can’t phone you for 15 days. All they needed to do was tell the receptionist to phone me and tell me to adjust my dose to “X” 🙄

MY DH had his cancer follow up cancelled in April, cancelled in May, by phone in August (because you can see a tumour on the phone). Finally managed to get someone to see him in person, PET, MRI, biopsy and we find out today if the cancer his back. We should have had all this happen in April- it is a bloody disgrace.

The hospital was empty- staff were wandering round complaining their were bored, decorating their masks, sharing out the cakes and singing (yes really) when `I had to go for an emergency A&E thing in April.

So many more will die from missed cancer than from covid.

@WhatWouldYouDoWhatWouldJesusDo

I'm just at the end of a ten day hospital stay and it's solely as a result of not being able to get into my GPs.

Hospital staff here are very vocal about the fact they don't feel GPs are pulling their weight. In my area they aren't even seeing patients, it's phone appointments only. There was a two month wait for a booked appointment or ring early for an emergency slot. I just couldn't get in and now here I am. Taking up a bed for over a week and putting more strain on exhausted staff

I was a hospital doctor for many years. Hospital staff know fuck all about how general practice works or what it is doing.

Primary/community care does 80-90% of all healthcare for 10% of the NHS budget (Government figures). Activity in general practice is up 20% on this time last year nationally (England) and 50% in some areas. And everything takes longer and is more complicated by PPE, social distancing etc. GPs are picking up masses of work that hospitals are unable to do at the moment due to back logs. The difference is that we don't tend to slag off hospitals to patients, because we understand it is not the fault of the staff, whereas some hospital staff get off on slagging off GPs. They don't have the teeniest clue how much work general practice does, that would otherwise land on their doorstep.