Cancer Treatment during Covid-19

I feel quite angry regarding the politicians' position over this.  Today and previously they were saying if you have 'cancer' concerns go and see your GP.  However, the reality is that even if you are referred you will be met with the following:  Cancer surgeries suspended or highly prioritised.  Chemotherapy suspended, drugs like Herceptin etc stopped.

All private clinics now contracted to the NHS such that an alternative private treatment route is not available.

I have emailed all tv newsrooms and prominent MPs about this problem two weeks ago, and have noticed an absolutely minimal response.  There has been the odd newspaper article.

I believe that cancer patients have been thrown under a bus! 

I noted that in America they are worried about subsequent lawsuits, and legislation is going to be enacted to protect the doctors.  I suspect this will also be the case in the UK.

I am sorry but I can't feel positive about this.  It would take the MSM to take this up and really hammer this home before the Government will really sit up and take notice. 

Everything is being sacrificed for COVID, despite the fact that the Nightingale units have really very few patients, and I have read the same about some of the private hospitals.   I am quite cynical about the politicians.   They are only interested in the short term and their own 'political' survival.  The collateral damage and subsequent fallout is further down the road!

D

Hi Dedalus,

Absolutely agree - I wrote to my MP Simon Jupp quite a while ago and have had nothing back from him. I am not sure whether they are all being told to keep quiet or whether they are too busy to respond but he seems to be finding time to put out tweets regularly! I will revisit him on Twitter as he seemed to respond immediately as the message I sent to him initially was on Twitter and was therefore in the public domain. He asked me to email him privately about my concerns which I did.

In terms of the NHS being ‘open for business’ as they keep saying at the briefings, I am finding that difficult to believe. The fact that the large scale Nightingale hospitals are virtually empty is great news but it’s time to ‘gee up’ the processing of patients with treatable conditions which may proceed to ‘untreatable’ if left too long. With cancer, you don’t know how aggressive a cancer is until it has been thoroughly investigated. 

We are obviously not alone in our concerns. I wondered what happened to the petition you started and whether it had garnered any further signatures/interest?

Maind

Hi Maind

Unfortunately, the petition although still gathering signatures has slowed right down and the latest total is about 4,500.  To achieve notice by the media and politicians in a big way, it would have to be in the hundreds of thousands.

The MSM is effectively the opposition, and until they sit up and take notice, we won't get very far.  The current media crusade is the care homes.  This issue has gained a few days traction and the politicians are currently waffling their way around it and generally going for damage limitation.  I don't have much confidence over how the COVID pandemic has been and is being handled by the UK Government.

I may be running against mainstream thought, but having garnered information from across Europe and worldwide, I believe that COVID is stalling.  The numbers are already falling, and some hospitals in Germany and Switzerland have limited numbers of patients.  Special units having been set up, are generally unoccupied.   I have even read that some staff in Europe are on short-time working!

I also believe that there was in effect a ruling elite hysteria, leading to gross overreaction, being discriminatory, and putting those with illness and cancer at extreme risk.  I have no doubt there will be criticism over this tactic in years to come, once the research has been done.  Unfortunately, those who have been discriminated against won't get those lost years and lives back.  The politicians will then try to cover their As and convince us about the wonderful job they did in protecting us.

Remember what happened with the Millenium Bug?

Personally, I will never vote again, despite a previously firmly held conviction that exercising your vote is important.  I am so disillusioned with our current batch of politicians in all parties.  The first rule of Government is that you protect the public, all of them, not just a proportion!  Their strategy was wrong.

IMO the C.V. will fizzle out like SARS in about the next 4 to 6 weeks, but there will then be the problem of a substantial backlog of those requiring treatment, which will continue to extend delays.

Hi,

It is a mess for sure.  I only hope the Chairman, Tonia Antoniazzi, of the party parliamentary groups on cancer and radiotherapy who has voiced his concerns regarding the "blanket stoppages" of cancer treatment continues to voice his concerns, along with Tim Farron, chairman of the group for Radiotherapy, who has raised his concerns over the "catastrophic  cancer crisis that is unfolding right now".  

We had another conversation with my Husbands Consultant to try and get him his treatment, to no avail even though one of our local private Hospitals is still open for patients, other than those with Coronavirus.  He wouldn't budge, said it was more of a risk that he might get CV than the detriment of holding back his cancer treatment, personally, I don't think so, he had a Grade 3. 

I think our only hope is that the CV does fizzle out and they get their backsides into gear asap, and put the same amount of energy into cancer patients, sadly, it will be too late for some.  

Totally understand your feelings Dedalus.

I did hear from Simon Jupp MP in the end but not until I tweeted him again - he emailed within an hour or so! Anyway, long story short was that he stated that this is an issue he and the Govt are aware of and that Matt Hancock is taking it up with relevant people - we will have to see how this translates to action on the ground. It did seem to have been picked up by one of the journalists day before yesterday at the PM briefing. I think it is beginning to bubble to the surface albeit slowly. My mum needs a CT scan now for ‘nodes’ at the bottom of her lung/s  accidentally spotted on a CT of her abdomen about 5 weeks ago - this has been deferred until the dust settles but I now have that anxiety in the back of my mind - it makes you realise what an amazing thing the NHS is especially when you can’t access it as needed. 

 I agree, my gut feeling is that this will fizzle out but remain around in the community like a bad cold but the military guy appearing on the briefing yesterday made myself and my husband look at each other in puzzlement as he had little to input to the whole thing and we wondered if he was there to get us used to seeing military people out and about in more than a simple logistics role.

i guess were all making suppositions in the absence of facts from the Govt but I hope you won’t mind me saying that you must take care of yourself because your wife needs you. It might be sexist to say it and maybe a bit presumptuous (and huge apologies if you see it this way) but men tend to want to fix things and find solutions - just be very careful you don’t burn yourself out trying to fix what may ultimately be out of your hands. We say to each other at work ‘You can’t pour from an empty cup’ - never a truer saying. 

Take care of yourselves!

Hello again Maind

I watched Helen Whately a Health Minister yesterday.  She was answering questions on the lack of cancer treatment issues.  She did not impress at all.  There was no proper answer to the question, just waffle.  It is usually 'watch what they do, not what they say'.  In her case it was watch 'what they don't do and don't say'!

There was a lot more about it on the MSM yesterday.  The issue is possibly gaining traction.

I am, however, getting feedback, that some treatments are beginning to resume, although I don't believe this is down to Govt instigation.  I heard of a family friend having a scan this week when they were previously having to wait, so I hope your mum can get her scan soon.

Thanks for your last paragraph.  I absolutely agree with your comments about it being a 'male thing' to try to find solutions and fix everything.  As you allude to it can be very stressful when you feel helpless and useless particularly because of COVID restrictions.  

Re the presence of the military.  There are many significant changes going on within western democracies at the moment.  Some of them have implications with regard to our civil liberties.  

Best wishes

D x

Agree that we can end up lulled into a false sense of security - journalists are in effect, as you pointed out, acting as the opposition and I don’t feel they always ask the right questions, get in loop over PPE or testing which then goes nowhere and loses other journalists valuable time whilst one or two revisit the same things over and over. I wondered if it would be better to let some of the general public ask questions from the ‘coal face’ because that’s who is being affected the most.

They are saying the NHS is ‘open for business’ and I’m hearing that being repeated at the briefings recently so I’m hoping this is a message that NHS trusts need to keep a weather eye on all the other business as usual which could potentially be forgotten in all the hullabaloo over Covid. Fingers crossed, there will be some leeway for cancer patients.

I totally understand the feeling hopeless and useless bit but being able to talk about how I was feeling at each stage was the best medicine and it’s massively important to be able to let that out. I am a great believer in the theory that trauma triggers cancer and so emotional support is key to treatment. Anything that cropped up in discussion which we couldn’t work out we put to one side and called the BC nurse the next day for further information. The major things I guess was and still is recurrence fears and probably understandably for most women, the fear that treatment of whatever form, will change you physically. One of the worst fears is that you will overwhelm your loved ones with your emotional distress and so it’s tempting to bottle all that up which isn’t good. 

Take care of yourselves in these weird times and I hope you both get through this as quickly as possible and with the support you both need.

Best wishes,

Maind

Thanks Maind.  All good advice.

Wishing you all the best also.

D x