Charity says NHS must deal with “woeful lack of support” for colorectal cancer survivors
BMJ 2015; 351 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h6976 (Published 31 December 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h6976
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It is always someone else's fault. In no way, do I refer to those with colo-rectal cancer. I refer to Macmillan as an example of the mindless babble by many, individuals and charities, who continually blame others for the predicament in which they find themselves. The special interest groups. Cancer sufferers should be able to access the necessary care. Unfortunately, there is a never-ending list of demands from patients. No health system is able to satisfy their every need. Most particularly, when it has to deal with such epidemics as binge-drinking induced injuries and illnesses, ERs filled with minor complaints, smokers, patients arriving with nonsense claims because they would rather not arrive at work because of a hangover, ridiculous claims about how their friend had a friend with a similar complaint and it turned into something serious. The NHS is not and never will be all things to all people. Where is the rationality of it all? This is the nonsense of which I complain. Diabetics who are so obese from over-eating and no exercise. It is bad enough having to treat a patient with diabetes, not through their own fault, but when it is through greed and gluttony, I find it most distasteful.
It is Britons, who are slowly destroying the service of which they claim to be so proud and it is likely to degenerate further into oblivion.
But, it is not their fault. Their stupidity is the result of a dumbed-downed education system, which favours reality TV over Shakespeare. A life of mediocrity never led to anything worthwhile.
I am ashamed to be British.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Once, people who had cancer died. Now, treatments are available, and anyone who has cancer, blameworthily or innocently, has to decide whether enduring the treatment is worth the life they will have after it, since, if they get rid of the cancer, they continue to have all manner of other afflictions resulting from the far from benign treatments.
If their cancer was worth treating, then the effects of treatments are worth attention too, since it seems even more cruel than it is pointless to draw someone back from the jaws of death by means which leave them struggling to live, and then to abandon them with “I could help you but I won’t, because you don’t deserve it.” That is why Macmillan is drawing attention to the needs of those living with the consequences of treatments.
Since he takes colorectal cancer as proof that people have behaved badly in the past, and that as enough to make them unworthy of aftercare, I am wondering if Dr Jordan means that treating colorectal cancer in the first place is a waste of time. It is also curious that Dr Jordan picks this particular cancer as the result of badness and hence undeserving when there are so many other diseases in which lifestyle is implicated. People with colorectal cancer, like other undesirables, pay taxes.
Competing interests: No competing interests
I am lucky to survive so therefore grateful. I noticed the signs early for anal cancer and my GP immediately referred me to colon rectal surgeon who was amazing. Quickly received diagnosis. So far so good, amazing. Then went on further to almost hell which I believe was caused by the treatment being in another hospital. Then mushroom medical treatment took over.
The effort of living alone, travel by bus, walk, train, walk to the hospital 5 days a week and coming home alone left me too weak to do anything. Others there received hospital transport and I lived further away than they did. The pain from the burns, and little support as to what to do was horrendous.The nurses at the hospital where diagnosed never replied to my calls for help but some of this may have been because I spent all day travelling so was never at home before the evening.. By the end of 5 weeks I was completely incontinent and the loss of several stones left me weaker still. I was sent to the oncologist by the radiologist because of burns at the end of 5 weeks and came home with some meds to take, went to bed and was found there on the Monday virtually unconscious by a friend who felt worried. She was a former nurse on a burns ward she pushed and dragged me down the stairs phoned my GP and poured morphine and water down my throat and then with me screaming with pain sat me in a bath of water to pee and even that had me screaming with agony. My GP who I cannot praise enough got me to the cancer ward by ambulance. I had help from the most amazing tissue viability nurse and ward sister. Incredible ladies. Days later in a morphine haze I had a bath and I think you could of heard me scream throughout the hospital.
I am left incontinent for faeces and have a fruit and veg only diet with chocolate to add calorific value as that is all I can eat. My life is limited but I feel that I should be grateful and to shut up as I am still alive. Don't know where to go for help with this problem or bad diet or the chronic pain I am still in. There seems no concern for the limited life you lead no help afterwards and almost a be grateful attitude. I feel jealous when I see how much others know, the treatments they have been offered throughout treatment and then afterwards and think that this is something all survivors should be able to access. I know I had a SCC but have found out through the Macmillan site this could through HPV I have polyps in the colon but no-one seems worried about them but I am, I am worried that I could have wart virus and the cancer could return. Help and answers should be at the treatment hospital not the original hospital as that is where you are most of the day. ALL PATIENTS SHOULD HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO HELP AFTER TREATMENT AND THROUGH TREATMENT WHEREVER THEY CAN ACCESS IT
Competing interests: No competing interests
I would like to thank Macmillan for speaking up for cancer survivors. Patients are often told to 'take responsibility for their own lives' and healthcare seems to have become mainly 'self management'.
There is an assumption we patients all get cancer because we are couch potatoes or have other inappropriate lifestyles. Not so! I had anal cancer in 1990. Although it is supposedly caused by hpv (human papilloma virus) neither anal sex nor promiscuity have been part of my lifestyle – yet I feel labelled.
My treatment included simultaneous chemo-radiation and radioactive wire implants. Pain, threatening incontinence and urgency have since blighted my life. I have to abstain from eating or drinking before and during travel, yet, inevitably, this seems to make my problems worse on arrival, with either resultant violent diarrhoea or the agonies of constipation; radiotherapy damaged tissue does not stretch, but tears and bleeds. My body is badly affected in many ways by the assault. My bladder is also unpredictable.
My social life is constrained by these side effects but I have struggled through 26 years of patient involvement (campaigner, speaker, writer, author, etc) trying to improve health services. And here I had better add that, yes, of course I am grateful to be alive, lest I be taken to task. But survival has had this hidden cost, making it difficult to visit friends and family.
And yes, at 76 I have other health conditions which I have to self-manage, and medications are limited due to cancer treatment side effects: radiotherapy-induced midline lymphoedema for which I cannot access effective treatment (necessitates daily self massage and support garments), bronchiectasis (non-smoker); osteoporosis, spinal fracture, osteoarthritis, and recently diagnosed allodynia – acute sensitivity to cold, heat and pain since cancer treatments. Not forgetting the ever-present post-treatment fatigue. And all these conditions interact, so I do not have the luxury of a single issue problem to take to my GP.
Those who survive cancer treatment surely deserve NHS support to manage the after effects of NHS treatments?
Competing interests: Author, Nothing Personal, disturbing undercurrents in cancer care, Radcliffe Publishing
Stop blaming everyone else! Stop treating everyone as if they are children. The problem is that patients, by and large, refuse to improve their dietary habits, refuse to remove themselves from the couch, refuse to stop smoking and drinking alcohol.
Each of us is responsible for our outcomes and especially concerning colorectal cancer.
But of course, MacMillan is a charity. It is your raison d'etre to cause alarm, in order to gain publicity and hopefully funding, but all that is happening is a perpetuation of the status quo. Large numbers of patients abuse their bodies, abuse healthcare and want somebody else to take the blame, to take responsibility.
Aneurin Bevan, at the beginning of the NHS, warned of the mismatch between endless demands and limited resources.
Britons have become useless. It is time they were colonized?
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Charity says NHS must deal with “woeful lack of support” for colorectal cancer survivors
As an oncologist specialising in prostate cancer, I have to say that elderly male patients with prostate cancer fare even worse in terms of support with social and psychological issues.
I often envy the amount of support available for female patients with breast cancer. With tongue firmly in cheek, I feel obliged to join the currently fashionable, social media bandwagon and term this lack of support to men as 'sexist' . At the same time, I also wish to thank the vocal, politically active, breast cancer lobby for raising the standards that should be expected by 'all ' cancer patients.
Competing interests: My clinical and research work predominately involves prostate cancer patients