My husband was diagnosed with bladder cancer 6 months ago and has been having treatment at our local hospital.
At the time of diagnosis they also said he had benign prostate enlargement and, due to him having problems emptying his bladder fully, prescribed Tamsulosin - just one a day but for life.
Since then he's also been taught to self-catheterize and is now doing that twice a day. The Urology Team set him up with Coloplast Charter who supply him with everything he needs and it's delivered to our door.
He's having problems getting his repeat prescription signed off by our GP and is having to phone them to chase it up every month. The Tamsulosin has now been increased from a one monthly to a two monthly prescription following a discussion with the GP - prior to that we had to chase it up every month.
He had his last supply of catheters issued on 30th November - one month's supply. Coloplast advised him to order his next lot by 10th December due to the Christmas post. He did and has just come off the phone to our surgery as the prescription has still not been released. He's had to chase our GP up for this every time and he really doesn't need any added stress. After a long discussion they did finally agree to sign off the prescription today after questioning him closely about how many caths he used each day and the person he spoken to seemed to be unable to work out how many days 60 cathethers would last him if he used 2 a day!
I'm getting to the point where I'm seriously thinking of changing GP surgeries. Does anyone else experience these problems?
