Cancer

Bad news - 1 in 2 (50%) of people in the UK born after 1960 will be diagnosed with some form of cancer during their lifetime. Females have the highest lifetime risk of breast, lung and bowel cancers. Males have the highest lifetime risk of prostate, lung and bowel cancers. Good news - Half (50%) of people diagnosed with cancer in England and Wales survive their disease for ten years or more. Really bad news - Nearly half of cancers in England are diagnosed at an advanced stage, when they are harder to treat successfully.

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics-for-the-uk

I had a possible ovarian cancer scare 5 years ago. Fortunately it proved negative. I'm now in a 2 week waiting slot for an appointment to check for tongue cancer. I'm quite sanguine about health issues having lived with chronic conditions for decades. I don't believe in losing sleep over something until I know it's a reality. Then I will deal with it. In the meantime I get on with living my life.

I do believe in being very pro active & well informed about my own health & body. That is even more true now because the NHS is in such a difficult situation. Getting to see a GP isn't easy & getting a referral & treatment is probably more difficult than ever before. 

I don't know enough about the complexities of running a monolithic organisation like the health service to understand what is wrong & what should be done. I do believe that we are in this situation because of years of underfunding, under provision of medics & under resourcing of care services more generally. In addition I don't believe that the health service should be farmed out to private companies who pay dividends to shareholders.

I suppose my main point is about responsibility. We are each responsible for what we do - the food & drink we put into our bodies, the drugs we take, the activities we participate in, the amount of exercise we do, our habits....It is in our interest to be as healthy as we can be. The NHS is responsible for providing treatment that is effective & appropriate at point of need. It's a contract.

The trouble is it is very close to complete collapse now. 

UPDATE

I saw the Oncologist this morning - Only 10 days from seeing the GP. No waiting around - Straight in. Very thorough, reassuring & helpful. They don't think the lesion is cancer, but it will be removed, possibly on Saturday, but probably next week, then sent for a biopsy, which will hopefully confirm their diagnosis. But whichever way it goes the lump will be gone & I will be able to eat, drink & talk properly once it heals.

Very relieved & pleased. Chatting to the nurse, it's the surgical wards that are under pressure, outpatients is fine. The wards are full & understaffed. The nurse said he could earn more working in a supermarket, but there would be no job satisfaction whatsoever. 

That's the reason we manage to keep nurses, emergency responders, care workers, teachers, doctors, police & everyone else who do a difficult job day in & day out. They are all people who care & want to help their fellow human beings. 

Conservative politicians rely on that & are able to live with the fact that these services are understaffed & underfunded & have been for years. Now politicians have the nerve to demonise these people for threatening strike action. There hasn't been a strike in the NHS since 1982. The fact that nurses will be balloted on strike action on September the 15th is a measure of how fed up they are. The 3.5% governement offer is derisory when inflation is 11.8% & they have effectively had a pay cut for several years. The NHS is short of 50,000 nurses and midwives and the government has no credible plan to fix this.

Actually I really believe that this government has no credible plan to fix any of the mess that we are currently in. The UK is the "Marie Celeste" - there is no captain & no crew.