I followed that up with three-monthly visits to the hospital which were reassuring. That mainly depended on whether you saw the consultant, the registrar or a junior doctor who, I know these people have to learn their way, have to see how it works, but I didn't derive any confidence from a, especially one boy. Unfortunately when you get old you think of them as young boys, who made a lot of fuss about the tattoos I have on my breast, or where I used to have a breast. And he seemed completely fascinated by these. But these had been used for the radiotherapy, for homing in. Now I didn't gain any confidence from my visit to the hospital that day, because I felt, if he doesn't know about tattoos, what does he know about the whole situation.
You get an appointment for a check-up after having had cancer and you cling to it as, this week it's another, you know, three months or whatever. And you go, and there are fifty other people there, and you are called, and if you get someone who says, "Just lie down on the couch." and they run their fingers over the scar and they say, "How have you been?", and you say, "Fine.", and they say, "That's fine, see you in three months." That does not give you any, me personally, any confidence. I need, and nothing annoys me more, is the doctor writing their notes while they are speaking to me. If they can't spare me the time to look at me when they're speaking to me, I just feel I'm on some sort of conveyor belt and I don't derive any confidence from them.
If I have someone who is perhaps a registrar, or up further anyway, who takes the time to feel round my lymph or under my arms and round my neck and my tummy. Now, it may be, someone pointed out to me one time, listening to your baby with the thing, doesn't actually tell you anything but it makes the mother feel more confident. And maybe that is the situation with feeling and doing that sort of thing, maybe it's exactly the same. But for me, it gives me more confidence that they have looked and felt and spoken to you and perhaps asked you a couple of questions. And it only takes a few minutes more, just a few minutes more to do that. I feel better after it anyway. |
