There is rarely a good time or place to explain to a patient that they have an untreatable cancer. Three a.m. in a side room of a busy emergency department is certainly not it. But for this patient, whose life would be radically changed, and eventually cut short, by her diagnosis, the misery was compounded by a further question: ‘If I’d had it checked out sooner, could they have treated it?’
Sarah (not her real name) had put off seeking help during the early days of the pandemic, recognising the severe pressure the health system was under at the time. She thought she was doing her bit to ‘protect the NHS’. Yet looking back, she knew something was deeply wrong. Over ten months she had lost several stone in weight and become progressively more exhausted – ominous symptoms which would set alarm bells ringing for any clinician. By the time I saw her as an emergency admission, her cancer – picked up on CT scan – had spread to her liver and was no longer curable.
As services closed during the pandemic, it was screening programmes and GP referrals which bore the brunt
For cancer patients like Sarah, diagnosed at an advanced stage, many will look back for earlier signs and wonder if they might have caught it sooner.
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