NHS waiting list crisis: stuck in healthcare 'no-man's land'

A big part of my life has been taken away from me where I just haven't been able to do anything without knowing what's going on, it just sucks man you know your body was falling apart and this could fix it but you can't have it. It was the worst moment of my life because I knew what would happen if I didn't receive timely treatment. That's what almost 6.3 million people across Eng

land

are doing. You feel like you're completely forgotten and it's a really scary place. They are

stuck

in a queue for the NHS which many say is taking too long When Ian went for a routine scan in 2021 he didn't think he had anything to worry about, he was a fit and healthy engineer who used to love independent travel that's me in front of the White House that's me in Egypt diving with some friends in the Red Sea but after

waiting

a month a test delivered the news no one wants to hear that they had found a tumor there in my um in my intestine I was written by a nurse who quickly gave me a lecture about uh we found you early everything will be fine we'll get quick treatment blah blah and you got that quick treatment no it was the worst moment of my life between getting that referral letter urgently due to suspected cancer and begin treatment.

He knew what would happen if he didn't receive timely treatment. I have enough cancer to know that it loves time and will move forward, and I tried to reach out to so many people for help. to get treatment quickly and there was absolutely nothing at that stage, no one really wanted to meet me when cancer is suspected, patients in Eng

land

are supposed to start treatment less than 62 days later. Ian says it took him much longer to start chemotherapy, about 3 months later. between different doctors and while

waiting

the scan showed that things had progressed from its initial stage, the diagnosis revealed that it was already well established in my abdomen so the stage I was at was stage four, what was it like hearing Those words?

Yes, it shocked me. It was a bomb to know, but it took away the uncertainty and, strangely, I found a sense of peace freely. I didn't find that when I was in this kind of no man's land waiting for a result. Ian continued with the treatment doing what he could. to prolong his life but even after chemotherapy and surgery the cancer had spread to his liver, crucially he was still operable but he told us it took another two months to get approval for the surgery while all these tests. I grew by default and was again ineligible for surgery so at this point they tried to shrink it with chemotherapy which didn't work.

They told me there's nothing we can do for you with chemo, you know, be prepared for, you know, inevitable Ian says they finally offered him more chemo, but his prognosis still isn't good, the writing is on the wall now. in my liver, maybe the best I can hope for is to simply have another summer after years of covid delays and staff striking over pay conditions. The waiting

list

in England is starting to decrease and with cancer 91% of patients start treatment within the target time of 31 days from diagnosis in A&E the chances of waiting more than 4 hours have been decreasing for months improvements the service attributes to hard-working staff but He also says the pressure on the NHS is going nowhere and for many there are no illnesses either.

It's almost like being tortured because people have essentially said we don't care to fix the fact that you're suffering through most of it. life Flora, a university professor, has been living with a condition she didn't even know existed. I don't know if you know those wooden toys where you press the bottom and they collapse in on themselves because they're held together by elastics and that's basically how my whole body works. Symptoms began when she was a child, but it wasn't until she was in her 30s that the pain became persistent. I went to see my GP about this and I imagined they would say, "You know you are." you work too much at your desk you are an academic you are not very sporty maybe you should exercise more and be told you have this lifelong condition that if you do a quick google search you will find out that it is quite degenerative and has a really serious impact on people It was a bit of a shock, I think I walked home in a few days, like I really don't know what's going on around me right now.

Flora was told that she probably had Ellis Danlos syndrome or EDS, a rare disease. condition that affects the body's connective tissue, but more testing was needed, she was first sent to a physiotherapist at the local hospital and then put on a waiting

list

for a specialist clinic in London. She says that 6 months later she still had not received a response. I left voicemail after voicemail and finally got through to someone and she said, "We're way behind, it'll be at least a year before we see you and finally during Co I got a letter from them to say, Oh, we'd like to offer you". an appointment now and then, a month later I got a letter saying we had canceled his appointment because we don't have capacity due to Co um and they just sent me a printout of the PowerPoint slides they would show him and that was the last I heard of So what kind of treatment did they offer you at that time?

Nothing, my GP said. I feel uncomfortable prescribing something until I've seen a specialist, so I was in this Catch 22, like we could. He doesn't prescribe anything, you have to see a specialist and a specialist says we can't treat you, so I really felt like at that point I had no choice but to go private. Flora told us a couple of private appointments and some tests set her back several thousand but after tearing the cartilage in her hips she still needs surgery that she can't afford privately. She has now been on the waiting list for 18 months during which she says her condition has worsened if I had surgery a year ago. she probably wouldn't use a wheelchair.

She wouldn't use crutches. My surgeon told me that there is a 70-80% chance that if I have surgery, I would not feel any pain in my hips. How do you feel about your future? Like my life is kind of quiet while I wait, you know, getting to the top of the waiting list again is devastating, it makes you feel like the

healthcare

system is collapsing. Public satisfaction with the health service is at an all-time high. low and the main reason is the long waits for hospital and GP appointments, sometimes not knowing is the hardest part of all.

I've always been active, like skating since I was 14, so I've always been pretty fit and healthy, but One morning in 2021, everything changed for the pub manager, Adam, when he had a skateboard accident. He just bent the way he shouldn't be. What can I drink? Can I take a content number? P please, it hurt, it felt like it really did. loose and shaky, so we went to the hospital and they told us the wait would be about 20 hours for someone to see us who could do an x-ray or something. In the end, I think she was a triage nurse and I was.

I limped in and they said, "No, you're fine, go." He stopped skating and implemented his own physical therapy routine, but he was still in pain. 9 months later, he returned to the hospital. The x-ray was pretty instant and I like it, it's swollen. I can't see so I had to wait 3 months for an MRI and I finally got it. I had to wait another month to be seen by a doctor who can actually analyze the MRI and tell me what's wrong with my knee and they like it. Yes, you clearly have a badly torn ACL that is obliterated.

Adam says he opted to have surgery and was told it would be a 6-9 month wait that we were planning to get married, but that didn't happen because that's at the peak of When the surgery was supposed to be, it really affected my job. I couldn't receive deliveries or do any heavy lifting. I'm a musician, so I had to cancel concerts. I couldn't go to festivals. I couldn't skateboard anymore, which. It really affected my social life not knowing what was going on, it just sucks, yeah it was a really difficult time, it definitely affected my mental health for quite a while, in the end Adam waited 13 months for surgery, 25 months since his initial injury, did he? what was it?

It was like the first time you skated again, were you nervous? So I usually start the hill at the top of the hill and climb about 34 seconds of the way down as if I wasn't going to make it to the end despite general dissatisfaction with In the NHS, most people still believe in the principle that both major political parties say fixing the Health Service is a priority and almost half the population wants more to be spent on public health; They are doing the best they can with what they have and they deserve so much more, life is not back to normal yet but Adam is on the road to recovery but many people like Flora and Ian could spend the rest of their lives fighting for help through the NHS.

I need this to work because there is nothing. It's an alternative. I have no control over what happens to my body, but we could fix the NHS and we could fix how people access

healthcare

in the hope of surgical support and life itself, no matter how much time remains. Very often we only limit ourselves to details and statistics, but If you could understand that what they are really doing with this is giving Posta death certificates to these people and that there is a human story behind all this waiting and what it does to you to you.