All was well until January 2000. Hubby had been back at work since August 1996, he had gone for all the checkups and each time all was OK, but he had put up with a hernia since the first op and in January 2000 he went to see the surgeon to discuss an op. It was the first time that I did not go in the room with him - call of nature - when he came out from the consultation he was grey. I asked what was wrong but all he could say was get me out of this place. His eyes were full of tears and he seemed to have aged in that moment.
Outside the hospital he told me what had transpired - when he had finished discussing the planned op he asked the doc how his blood count from the July before was, just out of interest. The doc flicked through his notes and the colour drained from the docs face, 'Oh ....., your cancer has been back since last year'. At that point the doc told him to go home and wait for a call from the oncologist, they would have to look into this.
I was not happy with this and when we arrived home I called the oncologist, all hell had let loose, come back next week was the reply and we will sort this out.
The following week came and we found ourselves sitting with the surgeon and the oncologist, they were telling us how the junior doctor had been informed of the raised blood count but had forgotten to do anything with that news. Hubby would need scans to see how far it had gone and then they would discuss it in more detail. The only thing that kept going through my mind was that these things happened to someone on the news, not us!
So after the scans we went back again, the bad news was that hubby would now need to undergo intensive treatment and a stem cell transplant as the docs could not be sure that his blood wasn't riddled with cancer cells due to the time lapse.
We asked the hospital how this could happen to a patient that was under surveilence and we asked for support. The reply we got back was that if we wanted answers from the hospital then to take legal action and no support was forthcoming. Could this get any worse?
