Firsthand experience of cancer treatment delays

THERE is so much to commend about the new, increased efforts to respond to cancer treatment. I wish it all success possible. However, I would like to put my own situation on the table as a pointer to the wider issue of diagnosis, or lack of.

I became a little concerned about some symptoms I was experiencing in 2014. I asked my thenGP about it. He dismissed it as nothing serious, probably due to medication and other conditions.

However, those symptoms persisted, and I contacted an online test service, based in Australia, to get some faecal samples tested.

When the results returned, I was again advised that there was little to worry about, despite the analysis of very probable bowel cancer. Unwisely, I trusted my GP.

There was no followup. I was not put on to the waiting list for a colonoscopy or for any CT scan.

In 2016, the wall of my bowel collapsed. Other than treating me with antibiotics, nothing remedial was done by Dunedin Hospital at that time, until a colonoscopy was performed nearly half a year later.

I was found to have a grade 4 tumour of the bowel. After removal, and the passage of another year, it was discovered that there had been a spread to my lungs.

I have experienced a lot of serious surgical, chemical and radioactive procedures, ones which have really sapped my strength, if not my spirit.

But I have also experienced wonderful treatment at the hands of the staff of the many and varied departments involved in Dunedin and Dunstan hospitals. They are fantastic.

If only my GP had listened, and if only there weren’t such big gaps between tests, treatments and followups. Grade 4 might have been grade 2? Secondary lesions may not have even been an issue.

It is not just the Government that needs to up its game on this issue. Many health professionals need to reappraise their abilities and their priorities as well.

Name withheld by request

BIBLE READING: The Lord is my light and my salvation; who shall I fear? — Psalm 27:1.