Ok here goes.
In 2014 Cal was diagnosed with breast cancer following routine screening. It was caught early so she only required a lumpectomy followed by radiotherapy and she had been in remission since. She was however prescribed a 5 year course of a hormone drug to reduce the bodies production of estrogen.
In the summer of 2020, about 9 months after we had moved down here, she received a letter from our GP surgery saying that they had received a request from The Mermaid centre at Truro hospital (the Cornwall equivalent of the Marina Dalgleish centre) to set up a meeting, and that she will receive confirmation from the Mermaid when this will be. We naturally assumed that The Mermaid had received Cal's breast cancer file from Liverpool and wanted to set up a meeting with the local oncologist. Two weeks later she received a letter from The Mermaid confirming the appointment, that it would take approximately 4 hours, and that unfortunately she wouldn't be able to have anybody accompany her due to Covid. So Cal's thinking why do i need 4 hours for a consultation, that last time took less than 15 minutes. So she phones up, eventually speaks to somebody who told her that it had nothing to do with an file from Liverpool, but to do with a general referral from her GP, in other words she was going to go through a formal screening process for breast cancer. She tried to explain her situation and was referred back to her GPs. So she phoned them up and, eventually, discovered that a doctor had been going through her medical records and realised that she had been on this hormone medication for longer than 5 years and therefore set up a referral to see if she still needed them. Apparently they're very expensive.
Anyway Cal phones back the Mermaid but the nurse she spoke to previously was off duty so she had to go through everything again. She didn't want to take up a 4 hour appointment that somebody else in more need could have had, and the nurse said she would deal with it and put a note on her file. The day of the appointment came and Cal was told to get undressed and put on a medical gown so she could be examined. Nobody had put a note on her file regarding previous telephone conversation, so she had to go through the whole thing again. They said that she needed to see a consultant oncologist but that was a different department and they would send a referral through. A couple of months later she received a letter to attend a meeting with an oncologist which she turned up for. Another waste of time initially. Firstly she didn't know anything about the purpose of the meeting as there had been no notes put on the referral, and secondly, she couldn't give any advice on the medication until she had seen her original records, which were presumably still in Liverpool, plus had an upto date mammogram which the consultant said she would request once her file came through. At least at this stage Cal felt as if she were dealing with somebody who knew what she was doing.
About a month later, Cal had a letter to attend a mammogram. I said to her this is too soon, phone them up and see if it is a routine request or whether it had come specifically from the Oncology department. So she spoke to them and discovered it was routine, she explained the situation and cancelled the appointment. A couple of weeks later she received a letter stating that she had failed to attend her appointment for a mammogram and to contact the centre to arrange another. I told her to ignore it.
Around November time she received another request for a mammogram which she attended. Mammograms were always a traumatic time for Cal as she worried that the cancer had returned. A couple of weeks later she received confirmation that the scan was clear and then another letter to confirm an appointment with the oncologist. When she turned up for it, she met a different consultant to the previous one, who knew absolutely nothing about her case and an extensive search for her records found nothing. You really couldn't make it up. Anyway, about 2 days later at home she received a phonecall from a very embarrassed lady consultant, who apologised for the mix up. The appointment should have been made with her and Cal's file was on her desk all the time. lol I mean, even Basil Fawlty couldn't get it so wrong.
the good news was that she didn't need to take another trip in to see her and she did the consultation over the phone. The hormone treatment was no longer required and could be stopped. the bad news was that she hadn't had a bone density test for 4 years and she should have been having them annually. Therein lies another tale. Sorry for the length but it was needed to get the full story out.
