It’s all too easy to blame the doctor when something goes wrong

My father is – was – one of the unlucky ones. It took him two years to get a cancer diagnosis. He kept going to his GP, complaining of faulty plumbing and even blood in his urine, but the GP thought it was prostate trouble and sent him for all the wrong tests. By the time Dad finally got the correct diagnosis, it was too late: his bladder cancer – normally one of the easiest to treat – had spread, becoming impossible to contain.

Unlucky, but not unusual. Almost half of cancer sufferers saw their GP at least twice before getting the tests that led to a correct diagnosis, according to the latest NHS figures. Almost one in 10 had to see them at least five times – a statistic that, even for the healthy observer, brings on palpitations of frustration and alarm.

The writer Deborah Orr – currently in hospital with metastatic breast cancer – tweeted last week about her own experience of trying in vain to get her doctor to take her seriously. “One year since I first went to my GP complaining of chest and back pain. Two weeks since it was finally diagnosed as stage four breast cancer. One week since I was admitted to hospital unable to breathe. This morning I talked about it to a breast oncologist for the first time.”

This prompted a torrent of justified outrage, with fellow cancer sufferers sharing their own experiences of being ignored or “dismissed”, and sympathisers raging against “bloody useless” GPS.

Ours is usually a nation united by a quasi-religious faith in the NHS. Its workers are “angels”, its achievements “miraculous”. When this faith is tested – when one of the angels doesn’t listen to a patient, or fails to spot the vital clue, or messes up the paperwork – the consequences can be devastating. And so is the sense of betrayal.

We trust in doctors to

save us – or at least to make us feel safe. But the former is often impossible, even when a doctor does all the right things. Despite all the advances in tests and treatments, cancer remains a confounding enemy, both stealthy and explosive. Often its delinquent cells have run amok before the most telling symptoms are felt. It doesn’t help that GPS are overstretched and under-resourced, or that most no longer practise the continuity of care that enables them to become familiar with individual patients.

A GP’S secondary role – making us feel safe – is perhaps even harder to fulfil. Because we’re not safe, and they know it.

Modern medicine has succeeded in beating back the frontier of death so that it remains invisible to most of us, most of the time. It is easier than ever to believe in miracles. But doctors spend their lives surrounded by death, and they know that it retains the upper hand. “Every triumph over some major pathology, no matter how ringing the victory, is only a reprieve from the inevitable end,” wrote the American doctor Sherwin Nuland.

What courage it takes, from both patient and doctor, to navigate that maelstrom of hope and terror and grief. My father refused to countenance the idea of dying, right up to the end. The same GP who had misdiagnosed him – his doctor of 35 years, and in the end a friend – took on the task of persuading him to let go. He sat by Dad’s bed and explained that there were no treatments left.

Afterwards, he stood in the hallway and cried. My mother patted him on the shoulder and said: “I think you are so brave.” I do too.