Who to contact? Hospital or GP. Blood in urine. Prostate cancer confirmed.

Hi Oft,

My name is Gail and I’m one of the cancer information nurses on the Macmillan Support Line.

Thank you for getting in touch. As nurses on the Macmillan Support Line, we do not have access to NHS medical records and so can only offer generic clinical guidance.

It appears you’re trying to reach out to clinical teams to highlight this new symptom and to get the appropriate assessment and care but unfortunately, you’re coming across barriers.

As you have a new symptom, it is important you are assessed. I’m sorry to hear you can’t reach your Oncology team and that your GP suggested you contact us on this platform. If they suggested contacting our support line, we could have offered guidance sooner.

We can sometimes take 2 days to reply on this platform and so we encourage everyone to use this for non-urgent responses only. I understand you were advised to use this platform by your GP.

When someone is losing blood in their urine, it’s important that the clinical assessor asks about how much blood you’re losing. They’ll ask about the colour of the urine, such as how red it appears, if there are any clots and how long you’ve been having this symptom.

This information is required to determine if a blood test is required to rule out anaemia. If you are experiencing, breathlessness when walking, feeling lightheaded or general fatigued, it’s important to contact 111.

Contacting 111 is necessary to ensure you are fully triaged over the phone and determine if immediate intervention is required. Only they can assess your symptoms this evening. This is necessary to find out if you should be seen this evening or if it’s safe to wait on your Oncology nurse returning your call.

I strongly advise you contact 111 this evening. Hopefully they can offer reassurance or suggest what intervention is best.

After they assess you and if they conclude you do not need seen this evening, you can call your consultants secretary tomorrow to ask for an appointment with your Oncologist sooner.

Although the secretaries don’t have clinical experience, they can reach out to your nurse and Oncologist highlighting the need for this symptom to be assessed soon.

We’re open until 8pm, and we’re happy to offer further guidance. Unfortunately, we have limited information on this platform which limits the guidance we can offer but please feel free to contact us after calling 111.

If they conclude you do not need assessed this evening, we can discuss other ways of reaching your Oncology team.

I hope you get reassurance this evening.

Take care,

Ref:amcg/gh

Thank you Gail. Apologies for not getting back earlier but other things besides the cancer worry took over. However, I have since been able to contact the GP who, following a urine test, have fast tracked me back to the team at the hospital.