NHS gold palliative care

[rolex]

Dad's dieing of prostate cancer, spread to his chest bones. Local NHS medical centre is completely hopeless. They have a system in place were u chat to sum random GP over the phone. Like I want to chat to an anonymous person over the phone about my father is disgusting. what happened to personal health care?

[FlyingMeeces]

It costs more money than the government is currently willing to pay for it. Objective truth - I'm carefully avoiding the question of whether I think that's ok or not!

I'm very sorry. Lost my grandmother a bit over a week ago to a terribly aggressive cancer and a few of the doctors were also not ones she'd even met before. But actually - these are by definition generally clever and caring people and they've worked out how best to function within the current system. They leave notes for each other, they talk, they read the patient's files: they can still get the job done. Hard for you and I'm quite sure that having real consistency of care would be better, but talk to whoever you get, he or she will (almost certainly) do their absolute best for your dad, the whole palliative care system is pretty well honed especially when the presenting set of problems are sadly a very well recognised lot.

All the very best.

[guillemot]

Hospices are the way forward. We were lucky enough to be near a Sue Ryder hospice that had space. They also helped us when still at home, too. We could take food in to eat together, take the dog in to see the relative - it was almost home from home.

Do you have anything like that near you? Worth getting in touch Marie Curie or Macmillan nurses if not? Had a friend who used the Marie Curie nurses and they were incredible.

Palliative care in hospitals IME was utterly diabolical because they're simply not set up for it.

[silent k]

guillemot said:

Hospices are the way forward. We were lucky enough to be near a Sue Ryder hospice that had space. They also helped us when still at home, too. We could take food in to eat together, take the dog in to see the relative - it was almost home from home.

Do you have anything like that near you? Worth getting in touch Marie Curie or Macmillan nurses if not? Had a friend who used the Marie Curie nurses and they were incredible.

Palliative care in hospitals IME was utterly diabolical because they're simply not set up for it.

Completely agree, with my wife the local hospice, Macmillan and Marie Curie made a huge difference. She came home at the end, and the local hospice had a team that would come out twice a day to check on her. Marie Curie also offered thing like night sitters, so somebody would come and sit with her overnight which meant I could actually get some sleep. I think you need a referral from your GP or district nurse to get on to their books but it's well worth looking into.