Reflecting

So, three years ago, I was just beginning post-operative radiotherapy. Listening to friends, colleagues and acquaintances talking about their experiences both before my own and more recently, it becomes clear to me that what happens varies according to who gives you advice.

For example, despite my pleas for some sort of help at home once I returned from surgery, given I wasn't supposed to lift a kettle let alone do the laundry, I was greeted with blank indifference by the medical profession. It was made quite clear to me that because there was a public holiday coming up, they wanted me out of the ward and the fact that there was no social worker available to do a home assessment to make sure I could cope by myself was of no importance at all. Luckily, I have good neighbours, but I still had to do far more than I was instructed to do in the leaflet I was given as the nurses waved me off home. Even calling the local GP practice once the public holiday was over didn't help - I was told that I would just have to pay for home help privately. Now, if I lived in a country where there was no national health service, I wouldn't be quite so put out about this, but I was promised before I went for my operation that I would be provided with a home assessment and subsidised help, particularly since I had had to stop work at the time, due to my cancer.

My daily trip to the hospital for radiotherapy was an exhausting experience. As I wrote while it was happening, it wasn't the therapy itself that made me so tired; rather, it was driving to and from the hospital every day, finding somewhere to park and walking around 2.5 kilometres in each direction from the car to the hospital and back. Now, I discover that a local charity would have provided a volunteer to drive me to the hospital, wait with me and bring me home. Why did nobody tell me that at the time?

The moral of this tale? At a time when you are likely to be feeling very unwell and vulnerable, you need to remember that you're probably going to have to fight to get information let alone support once you leave hospital. So, if you find that you're going to have any sort of cancer treatment, make sure you get the support and information before surgery/post-operative treatment if you possibly can.

I did survive it all, but it could have been so much less stressful...