And another nurse told me that I could apply for palliative care through my GP. And another nurse told me about Cancerbackup which is a telephone number that you can ring and ask any questions about your form of cancer, and also they send booklets out that are appropriate to you.
So we did apply for palliative care, and in due course a hospice nurse came to see me here in my own home and she explained that she could help with things which weren't entirely to do with my treatment, but they would perhaps help to make life a little bit easier for me in the circumstances that I had found myself in very unexpectedly. For instance, I was in a wheelchair before anybody knew what was wrong with me and fortunately I've managed to get much better now at moving about through the treatment I've had, but at the time I did need quite a lot of help and support of that kind.
Now, the sorts of help that she's been able to give me... At one stage I said to her that because I couldn't stand up and make any meals, my husband was doing it all and she pointed out that there were two things in the neighbourhood that could help with that.
There's a firm that will deliver you two weeks supply of frozen food and there's another one that will supply hot lunches. And we actually have the hot lunches now, even though we always used to have our main meal in the evening, we don't now, we have this hot lunch, which has relieved my husband tremendously, because for a year he did do all the cooking and then, because he likes cooking, but then it got just a bit too much for him, so that's what we do now and this was, you know, a suggestion from the hospice nurse.
Now some of the suggestions are much more sort of to do with medical things - for instance, if I haven't got enough of some particular prescription then she has very close contact with the GPs and she can just get any prescription. And she explained that the local pharmacy will bring... will deliver the prescriptions, which you know, I haven't really known that a person like me could ask for that service. |
