Hello,
I have a relative who has had massive (genuinely, surgeon said they had never done a surgery that big) abdominal surgery for cancer at the specialist centre in Leeds.
Their care so far has been atrocious:
- cancer missed for over a year by GPs and local hospital
- initial treatment locally (radiotherapy and surgery)
- surgery not correct so cancer left in lymph nodes, which the team labelled as 'inflammatory nodes'
- recurrence missed for 6 months by GPs and cancer team who kept pretending nodes weren't cancer
- further radiotherapy and chemotherapy for recurrence
- eventually referred to Leeds, who said radical surgery should have been done earlier
- sepsis after discharge from Leeds surgery, admitted locally and never scanned despite recent surgery. 'getting better' on antibiotics, so no care where infection was
- sepsis again and finally scanned- abdominal infection found
Throughout all of this, we (family) have telephoned and telephoned every department repeatedly- GPs, surgical teams, oncology teams, local teams, Leeds etc etc
Every time we have known there is something going on, we just could not get anyone to listen or take us seriously or look at his history and join up the dots.
They desperately need a specialist nurse to coordinate care and be a point of contact for when they are sick, so we can get the right help and actually be taken seriously.
The local hospital they are 'officially' under does not have specialist nurses for colorectal (the cancer in question).
Is there any way at all in the UK to get assigned a nurse who can be a unified point of contact, and to escalate and get interventions when there are signs of deterioration?
