fuck cancer

xp isn’t that a serious data breach? You should report them for that, if they’d given you someone else’s info as well as their pills, that’s pretty awful.

Sorry about having to deal with this shit.

Yeah, I'm shocked by that, I always assumed (naively) that the reason there's a whole production about getting prescriptions was that they were careful about this shit for decades.

nothing should really shock me any more dealing with the NHS and it's associated services

it'd be a miracle if I encountered someone who wasn't a completely incompetent cretin

the stupid fucking pharmacist cunts were out of stock of my wife's antidepressant last Friday (after sending it to the other woman) so they said they'd order it and deliver it on Saturday. nothing turns up on Saturday. my wife now only has 2 days left, so I call them today. the stupid cunts ordered the wrong strength. the pharmacist was "meant to call us, but must've been waylaid". so they are allegedly going to deliver it this afternoon

we won't be using these arseholes again but this is at least the 3rd pharmacy we've used because they are ALL fucking incompetent morons, it's just endless mixups, delays and bullshit wherever you go

Feel like I've blown any goodwill I had on this thread by my admittedly aggressive hatred of NHS cunts but in case anyone is interested in the latest farce I feel like this is a noteworthy addition to documenting what it's actually like dealing with the absolute scum that allegedly are supposed to help sick people in our godforsaken country.

I've mentioned several times the battle getting repeat prescriptions from our GPs/pharmacies. What has actually worked and I can't quite believe this is the situation we are in, is that my wife has to beg for her prescriptions. Our GP actually told us to do this, but it works. My wife has to write a note with her prescription requests pleading for the scum that fills it to please actually accept the prescription request because she has terminal cancer. Since she started doing that we haven't had any denied. Now we just have to deal with incomplete pharmacies.

If you know anyone who claims to be a doctor, please punch them in the face and tell them it's from me

I have made an official complaint against the pharmacy that sent my wife's prescription to the wrong woman. For all the good that will do

i can only speak for myself cp but its just a gobsmacking litany and but for the terrible circumstances would be darkly comic

if understandably vexed venting helps itt then go nuts imo

I dunno it sometimes feels like the NHS is some sacred cow. I get all this oh well they're overstretched you know. Try being on my side and see how much you care if some cunt GP has to see a few more patients or some absolute leech calling themselves a surgeon is whining they aren't getting their cushy pension so they won't look at your CT scan

start a fuck the nhs thread ill back ya

It doesn't take much to get horror stories out of other people either. I was just at the pub with a friend who told me the NHS basically killed her grandpa by injecting him with dye he was allergic to. The fucking scum surgeon tried to shake her dad's hand at his funeral. They nearly electrocuted my wife last year - it's expected that no departments actually talk to each other, but this was the same department. The radiology department put metal tipped stitches in my wife's chest, then the same department were going to scan her until she mentioned she had metal stitches in her, which would have burned her, so they cancelled the scan

I don't know what can be done about this.

Hopefully obviously I want a viable socialised medical system - none of my "criticisms" such as they are are arguing against a national health service as such, that's what I want - an actual national health service, not this absolute farce that we have now.

The radiology department put metal tipped stitches in my wife's chest, then the same department were going to scan her until she mentioned she had metal stitches in her, which would have burned her

argh! ouch, wtf

sorry you're having such a bad time - I've seen some annoying doctors and found 95% of chemists (pharmacies, before an American who studied chemistry gets cross) to be utterly useless but you really seem to be repeatedly dealing with shit no matter where you turn

I was drunk and angry last night. tbh I'm angry a lot of the time, but drunk and angry is an ugly combination.

I don't really know what can be done about the state of the NHS at the moment. kinda think mass sackings of incompetent people is the only way forward, but then there would be nobody left. I don't know why the people who study medicine seem to be so terrible at actually practising it. there's something really badly wrong here

maybe some form of system encouraging skilled medical practitioners from Europe to move to the UK would help

CP, i'm so sorry this is happening to you and especially yr wife. just awful.

Got my date for surgery today.

They're going to take out my whole rectum, sew me up, and I'll have a permanent colostomy. The tumor has shrunk, and I feel great (I ate tacos at South Philly Barbacoa (the one from Chef's Table, yes) and then went to the gym for an hour and a half after the appointment today, ffs), but it's kind of sinking in how much shit is going to change beyond just feeling like garbage because of treatments.

Gonna get TMI for a sec, but as many of you know, I'm gay...and not being able to have anal penetrative sex again again is really getting me down. I've had a good run of dicks in my ass, but it's still an enormous bummer, and I'm not sure how my husband and I are going to deal with it.

That’s unimaginable.

I mean everything on this thread is to me, frankly, I don’t know why that struck me as more uff da than anything else.

<3 you table

thanks y'all.

it's pretty...yeah, hard to think about. but so is dying, which i'm not quite ready for, so i'm taking what i can get.

I'm not really sure if people just think I'm a dick or if they just don't know what to say. I spent about 15 minutes ranting about how literally everybody is failing us to my therapist yesterday and he just said I suppose that must be difficult to deal with. This week my wife's oncologist "forgot" to put her anti-nausea meds on her chart so when she got an injection that causes nausea the chemo nurse refused to give her anti-nausea medication. If she had a non-jobsworth cunt nurse they would just give it to her anyway, but this nurse just said sorry not on the chart fuck you. Her palliative care nurse is back from sick leave. Tbf she had a reason to be off sick, some fucking scumbag set fire to the hospice 4 years ago and she had PTSD from it. The cunt died before he could be charged but killed 3 people on his way out. So that's good I suppose. She had a scan yesterday which will determine if she continues chemo or just stops treatment and we see what happens

Try not to get ill, nobody will help you

in terms of in the thread at least (imo), its so genuinely hard to know how to respond that wouldnt seem so totally inadequate CP

thats no excuse not to acknowledge the horrific situation you're in and what a shambles it all seems and how nightmarish it has to be for you

im so sorry youve to deal with this, any of this, all of this, and i hope that the venting helps even an iota, you deserve any outlet and relief you can get

^^^This is very well said. No one does or at least should begrudge you feeling the way you do. I would likely feel the same way. I wish you and your wife any momentary relief you can get.

CP, been thinking of you and yr wife.

Indeed so. And you as well, table. What a collective misery.

yeah, it's pretty awful!

i'm looking at the bright side, which is that now i get to get another cheeky tattoo: "Rectum? I nearly killed him!"

(one friend i said this to was like, "that's horrible!" and i couldn't really make them understand that the joy of a dumb but true joke like that is what keeps me going )

Thinking of you, table.

sorry, and thanks everyone

table, what's happening to you is also horrible and I do feel for you, and everyone else going through this

Good thoughts to you and your wife CP, the amount of shit you have to endure is staggering.

Table, please be well <3

<3 CP and table.

Yeah both of you <3

Same here.

<3 to cp and your wife, and also to table (i completely appreciate the joy of the joke)

cancer is such an asshole

Indeed it is.

https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2019/07/20/12-months-of-childhood-cancer/

Damn, Nick. Brutal. But also I'm so so glad things are - at the moment - ok. ish.
Arrival's on telly on Tuesday, btw.
How's Em - going back to work is a big deal.?

Nick that was so powerful and hits on so many feelings I'm also experiencing - suicidal urges, anger at religious sentiments. our situations are quite different but so much is the same. I am OK, mostly, too, it might not seem like it on here sometimes and on those occasions I'm not OK, I am trying though.

love to the Colonel and table

so we got the scan results today, and they were bad. been kind of expecting it because they are always bad, but you always hope something might work. further progression in the liver, this chemo not working either.

we had some good news, or at least not totally awful news, though. the previous useless wanker of an oncologist told us that was it, if that chemo didn't work then it was spending hours in a chemo ward on a daily basis or nothing. but the new oncologist (I hadn't met him before, my wife saw him once a few weeks ago before the scan) seems OK and he says there is another tablet chemo we can try, although if that doesn't work, then it really is IV chemo or nothing. my wife is pretty sure she won't do the IV chemo because she'd have no quality of life. she'd be in a hospital ward for hours per day and feel like shit all the time. life expectancy if she comes off chemo is 6-12 months.

Ah man, that's rough - I'm glad there's some good news though.

sorry about the bad news, CP - though glad there may be another option to explore. best wishes to you both

also best wishes to table, that's brutal - as Tombot put it, unimaginable. it's good to see you back, sorry it's in these circumstances

jfc scik mouthy, that really opened up the waterworks over here.

it gets at what has been bothering me the most recently: that so much of what i do is colored, if not defined, by this thing that i have little control over and didn't ask for, obviously.

love to you and yr family, and also to you and yr wife, CP. <3

so sorry CP
and to you, table x

hoping for the best for ye cp

I just tried to apply for a "Carer's Discount" card, because I've started going swimming as some kind of vague attempt at looking after myself, and the nearest swimming pool has a discount for "carers", and these are the options for "Relationship to Carer":

Parent
Grandparent
Child
Grandchild
Sibling
Aunt/Uncle
Niece/Nephew
Friend
Other

am I missing something here? or is "spouse" not valid for this or something. don't get me wrong, cancer sucks whoever you are, but like what the shit?

today's fun thing was that after we had the meeting with the oncologist, my wife checked the status of her repeat prescriptions, and they all came up as "Rejected". which we haven't had for a while, because as per instructions from her GP, my wife has been writing pleading notes with her prescription requests, begging them not to refuse them, because this is where we are now, you have to beg for your medicine to get it. this is all absolutely fine and just practising medicine as they normally do.

I rang up basically ready to shout at anybody that had the bad luck to answer the phone, and it's all fine because the prescription app shows "Rejected" when the actual status is "Waiting For Authorisation". I mean you have to take the good with the bad, sometimes the complete failure of the NHS to be any kind of remotely functioning system at all works in your favour! it's all fine, it's just not been authorised yet. with any luck, it'll be authorised within the next 70 years

just found out an old friend has terminal cancer. feel like a jerk for not keeping in touch. she has a young family too.

sorry about yr friend, kinder.

and jesus, CP, yr making the horrors of our system in the US seem like child's play.

Fuck Colonel, that's horrible, even if there is a potential bit of hope via the other oral chemo. I don't know what NHS trust you're under but it sounds terrible. Makes me think we've been very lucky with ours. Love to you and your wife.

Table: love to you and your husband.

Kinder: Em's understandably struggling. Been off work for 18 months now, no confidence or interest in going back to work, but I think she'll benefit from it once she's in it. She's kind of accepted that she needs some counselling now, and could manage it logistically, but is having real difficulty finding one; the crappy over-the-phone assessment by our work-counselling scheme determined that she didn't need counselling (wtf?!), and two other people she's approaching privately simply haven't got back, which strikes me as bad practice for any fucking business soliciting trade, but morally well out of line if your business is counselling people.

Wrote another thing: https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2019/07/29/who-are-we-if-were-not-that-cancer-family/

For me, returning to work now would need some sort of total immersion, re-absorbing it all again without being required to actually do anything for a couple of weeks - and not having to switch to badgered-parent-mode for the rest of the time. At least that's what I found difficult before. The counselling thing sounds rubbish! Hope she has more success.