**Trigger Warning** Title edited by MNHQ "Are some people being denied care at end stage terminal cancer?"

[lottieandmia]

My mums work colleague has been taking care of her mother who recently died of cancer.

Apparently she was unable to get care for her and her poor mother died, screaming in pain and with fluids coming out of every orifice :(

I'm horrified - I thought it was everyone's right to have morphine at end stage cancer. Is cancer care becoming yet another victim of cuts to the NHS?

Oh goodness, I've not heard of this happening.
Where in the UK are you?

WTF Thats horrific.

What do you mean she was unable to get care? Was she in hospital?
Poor lady :(

Could you not have put a warning in the title? I really did not expect to click on this.

We're in the midlands. I remember my Grandma dying of cancer (a good 21 years ago) and she had a line set up and morphine administered by nurses who attended her at home.

sorry, I'll email mnhq and ask them to express upsetting in the title

My mum has stage 4 cancer and she was told that all she has to do is ask for more pain relief and she can have it. She has a bottle of morphine in our house right now.

What happened to your colleague's mother sounds horrific but it should not be the norm, and I hope would be reported.

I hope it's not the norm - I felt very upset when she told me about it. It's making me worry as I really thought this sort of thing doesn't happen in the UK.

Was she at home? Hospital? Hospice?
What had happened in her last few days?

It does happen sadly.
I used to work for a GP practice. One of the GP's came in exhausted one morning as they'd spent all night with a dying patient.
The patient had cancer and chose to die at home. The family panicked when it was clearly the very end and knew the GP who came round as the care hadn't arrived and they were frightened they weren't doing enough.
It's very sad.
My gran was left to die on a ward. We knew she was dying. The staff knew she was dying. They could have given her drugs to stop her being so afraid. They didn't and minimised it and patronised her.
None of my complaints were taken seriously.
We were with her. It would have been nice for a nurse to be empathise and reassuring but they weren't. They were complaining and chatting just outside the curtain.

End of life care can be very poor.

My relative died recently, the actual care in the cancer hospital was fantastic. The other services were shockingly bad throughout her care (even the cancer hospital couldn't get her local hospital to for in her CT scans when they needed them sometimes). We couldn't get a hospice bed for her when she needed it (fluid build meant she struggled to breathe) and that meant she had to go to hospital. She spent 90 minutes waiting on an ambulance, then spent 7 hours in a&e before being moved 4 times in 2 days before she died. In the 7 hours in a&e she didn't get any pain relief as there was no doctor to review her X-ray and they wouldn't give her anything til that had been done.

Our complaint, the second in her 15 month illness, contained 5 points that were serious enough to merit a complaint on their own and she was only in for 3 and a bit days...

The lack of beds in places is the big problem. She shouldn't have been in hospital and because she was someone who should have been probably couldn't be.

She was at home StealthPB.

She told my mum that nobody had been available to administer drugs /care

Not our recent experience. I discussed with the doctors what the plan would be for the last few days/ weeks. Getting drugs to take away pain wasn't an issue, they ensured they kept on top of the pain right to the end.

The friend can have a meeting with the hospital to talk through this. I was offered it - if they don't offer ask for it.

This can't be true, my dad died of cancer and had access to morphine both in and out of hospital. There's more to this story.

Presumably it's as much about the staff available as it is access to (e.g.)morphine

Wasn't my experience. No way is this a policy. But I could see how someone could slip through the cracks- no hospice space, no hospital space, no home care nurse available, usual GP is away etc. Bounced back and forth between different phone numbers. And so no morphine is set up.

Gosh, no I'm sure it can't be a policy. But still it shouldn't be happening at all.

Not my experience when my DM was diagnosed with terminal cancer and subsequently died. Her care was managed by various people including pain relief.

We had it for my DGM, she was entitled to CHC funding (as most should be at that stage of the illness) and was moved to care home. But if my DM didn't know her way around the system I fear what might of happened.

My mum died at home of cancer, three years ago. We had superlative care from the district nurses, her gp and the ooh go service (she died on Good Friday night and a locum GP was with us within half an hour of us phoning to report her death). She had a syringe driver and we called the DNs several times to administer extra morphine and midozalam and they attended very quickly. We could not have asked for better care - and she died less than 4 weeks after initial diagnosis and 2 weeks to the day after bringing her home from hospital.

It saddens me so much to think others have not been as fortunate

I think it very much depends on how much things go to plan. When we were planning things for my relative it was very, very good.

When things happened unexpectedly the cracks were massive. It just takes one glitch - no hospice bed or the wrong person on holiday and everything falls to bits.

Also for anyone in that situation ask, ask and ask again what services were available. Several times we were unaware, because we'd asked the wrong person, of services tat were available to help her.

There is a shortage of staff (i.e. money) to allow people to die at home. I imagine your mum's friend wanted to die at home rather tham hospital but there was no staff available to support her. Macmillan recently raised this as an issue - in most cases it means people end up in hospital when they dont want to be rather than being left to die with no medication.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/28/thousands-of-cancer-patients-denied-wish-to-die-at-home

DM had one night in hospital where she wanted more morphine and didn't get it. I feel awful thinking of her on her own in pain and wish we were there. After that she was given more morphine when we came in the following morning.

A friend of mine father died two weeks after being diagnosed and his death sounds like the one you're describing OP. He was in a lot of pain and the nurses didn't get there till after he passed. They said it was because it was the weekend. Quite frankly it sounded horrific.

How awful :( I think this was also at the weekend.