It's a tragic story that has ruined several lives needlessly, for the sake that someone, with even a small amount of medical knowledge, might have either sussed out what the problem might be, or at least arranged for some very basic and inexpensive tests to be carried out.
Given that there's been a strong emphasis over the years on recording all individuals' medical data on computers, either by the GP or the rest of the NHS, I'm constantly surprised by how often the system fails to piece it together, to come up with some logical suggestions for a diagnoses or, at the very least, further investigation.
It's not a new problem but I think there's far less excuse for it now than there was: Many years ago, my then father-in-law suddenly developed a problem of needing to get up frequently in the night to have a pee. He went to his GP who simply said: 'prostate', and put him on a year's waiting list (it was the mid-1980s) to see a specialist at the hospital.
Jim didn't kick up a fuss - he wasn't that sort of man - he simply waited 6 months before he could bear it no longer, then went back to his GP and managed, with some difficulty, to get pushed up the queue.
When he finally walked into the consultant's room, the doc looked up at him and asked: 'How old are you?' '56', said Jim. 'Have you considered this might be cancer? You're too young for it typically to be old man's prostate problems', said the Consultant.
And so it was. Two years later, after the most horrible struggle, which I witnessed very much first-hand, my good friend and (more to the point) the grandfather of my 3 very young children, who then grew up without properly knowing him, died. He was one of the kindest and gentlest men I would ever know and he should have had so many more years ahead of him.
The cancer he had was, he was told, 'often treatable if caught early'. Was it a lot to ask that a highly-trained and very well paid professional (the GP) should have been able to put together: young age + prostate symptoms = possible cancer = priority in any waiting list? Have we progressed so little in the past 30 years that we can't do better at what should be such simple potential diagnoses, or lay down procedures to be followed by all GPs?
I know that any routine run by human beings will be fallible but we bang on so much about other things that hardly matter that I sometimes think we've completely lost the plot.
Sorry, rant over. The story just touched a nerve, I'm afraid, and one that's still very raw, all these years later.
