NHS fails again

Warning

This one is a bit more angry than usual, You might want to skip it and go to something a bit safer...............

Before the "meat" of this post, the good news: I have now passed the halfway mark; the end of my daily trips to KOC is now in sight...........just. 

Passing this milestone would be enough to brighten my mood if it were not for the fatigue which is starting to reach seriously limiting proportions. I am now reduced to a window of being ok for a couple of hours in the mornings, having to snooze my way through early afternoon, then finding that any serious activity results in the evenings being wiped out. The rational side of me says that this is probably a price worth paying for getting rid of the cancer; the emotional side is furious that my body is letting me down. Even worse, I am now having to let friends and colleagues down.

You might recall that I asked at my "review" for some drugs that would help me overcome the fatigue and that this was far outside their experience. No luck there.

My next step was to try my GP..........nice bloke, very friendly, but as it turn out completely useless. " I can prescribe vitamins or steroids, but amphetamines or similar are not in my power to prescribe; these can only be prescribed by a specialist". 

Conclusion: the NHS is useless at treating the whole person and is quite happy to ignore subjective experience in favour of its own protocols and procedures. The system seems to be geared to an attitude which could be characterised as follows:

• You insisted, so we performed a screening test
• We might have missed our deadlines, but we offered you treatment
• Every time you question what we do, you are marked down as cynical and difficult
• We offered you 19th or 20th century treatment because that is easy; if you want anything more modern, you have fight for it
• Now we are treating you, you should be grateful that we will fix the original problem (we hope)
• Your quality of life or ability to function / work is not the province of the NHS while we treat you.

In short, I should be grateful for a second class service. To think, people fight to keep this moribund organisation! Worse still, they resist any kind of reform. Even worse, the majority of people in this country seem not only to accept this, but to treat it as a form of religion. 

Meanwhile, out in the real world, consultants are busy telling us why they could not possibly work at weekends unless we pay them a fortune to do it in their spare time at agency rates and we have a new report on cancer services. Apparently the key message is that diagnostics should be speeded up..............for a "snappy summary, click this link:

Cancer report

The press headlines seem to have missed the second point: an 80% increase in screening. It will be interesting to see whether they finally come down on what I think is the correct side of the PSA screening debate. 11,000 men still die from prostate cancer each year in the UK; surely the introduction of regular testing for men over 50 would reduce this? No-one seems to be bothered.

An interesting aside is that the chair of the "Task Force" (sounds very like something the British would send into the middle east) is Harpal Kumar, who just happens to be the chief executive of Cancer Research UK. No vested interests there then?

It might surprise you to know that, once upon a time, I was a wholehearted supporter of the NHS. I worked in it, saw some of its flaws and naively thought that being on the inside might be a way of improving it. Older and wiser, I am now convinced that the only way to change public services is to mobilise people and communities. Like most young people of my generation, I started as a revolutionary, then calmed down and accepted the way things are. It is only in the last 10 years that I have rediscovered my revolutionary roots; acceptance of the established way of doing things is not a morally acceptable way of living.

Enough ranting, it is late and my window of wakefulness is coming to an end............and you will have had enough by now. Time for a tune. Tonight, something from way back featuring one of the most talented musicians ever to come out of Birmingham (Kitts Green):

Brontosaurus

I will be back with something a bit more thoughtful and upbeat in a few days................