Shattering human cost of putting Covid first
SAD to see Gillian Anderson and The Crown writer Peter Morgan have separated after four years. Perhaps even he couldn’t stomach her ludicrous portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in the series — it must have felt like going to bed with a Spitting Image puppet.
HAS any story of grief in this terrible Covid year been quite so harrowing as that of La’Troya Hall? Has any tale brought home so heart- stoppingly the human cost of our failure to treat cancer patients as we should have during the pandemic?
yesterday in the Mail, La’Troya told of her husband Sherwin’s death from cancer. ‘ He would almost certainly still be here today . . . if the NHS had not prioritised Covid above all else,’ she said.
It was February, and they were ‘so, so happy’, before he felt an excruciating pain in his groin. He visited A&E 13 times, begging for a scan.
But due to Covid, MRI scans were unavailable — so he was fobbed off.
By the time his condition was diagnosed, it was too late. The cancer had spread; 30 tumours were found in his lungs and he died aged just 28, leaving La’Troya a widow, alone at 32 with their baby son Sancho.
More than 650,000 cancer patients have had life- saving treatment disrupted since the virus took hold, and 4.4 million scans for the disease have been cancelled. La’Troya’s ordeal tells us what these bald statistics mean in human terms.
Her tragic story coincided this week with another one, also desperately moving, related on Radio 4’s Today programme by Sue
Martin, 49, about her husband Mal, 58, who was given ‘zero chance’ of surviving after he contracted Covid and was in a coma for 61 days.
She told of the day she took their two children to his bedside to say their final goodbyes, of how they sobbed over their father thinking they would never see him again.
yet, miraculously, thanks to the tireless care of NHS nurses and doctors, he survived.
He’s lost the sight in one eye. He’s got problems with dizziness, with his lungs and kidneys, and he’s had amputations of a thumb and fingers. But this Christmas he will be with his family. And we should all celebrate that.
Tragically, however, La’Troya and Sancho won’t have Sherwin at home. One wife rejoicing, one grieving. Only one daddy home for Christmas.
What a terrible burden these stories will be for the decision makers who put Covid before the Big C in the years to come.