My dear friend, Georgia, is suffering from metastatic cancer. She experiences terrible pains and faces serious mobility issues, but she endures her health ordeal with incredible strength and resilience.
I talk to her every day, but I rarely see her now – certainly not as often as I would like – as she undergoes chemotherapy treatments, is immunocompromised, and it wouldn’t be wise on my part to expose her to any risk.
I try to encourage her and lift her spirits, though not always successfully. Fortunately, she retains her razor-sharp humour, which neither the disease nor the healthcare system’s shortcomings have managed to take away from her.
For instance, she recently had to travel from Nicosia to Limassol for a medical examination (PET scan) available only at the German Oncology Center. As you can imagine, oncology patients from all cities end up there for this specific examination, with all the implications this has for a portion of our fellow human beings, who are not only tormented by the disease but also by the system.
My father-in-law, also a stage four cancer patient and bedridden since last March, often needs to be transferred to the General Hospital of Nicosia to have his catheter changed. This, of course, is not without its hardships, as he first has to wait for hours in the patient sorting at the Emergency Department and then be referred to the Urology Department of the Hospital for a medical act that takes no more than half an hour. The usual bureaucratic processes exist even in hospitals.
My father suffers from a rare haematological disease, is constantly transfused every week, and takes not one, but two handfuls of pills a day, each absolutely essential for his daily survival. And yet, one after another, there is always some medication in short supply, resulting in us being in a constant anxious process of searching for a drug that could replace the one we cannot find.
In social gatherings, friends often recount their ordeals in trying to find an appointment with a specialist. A friend of mine was in agony from back pain the other day due to lumbago, and the first available appointment was in three months! What use is an appointment in three months when the person cannot move right now?
And this problem is not only found with orthopedists but also with other specialities, such as gastroenterologists and endocrinologists. Let’s not even discuss personal doctors who have ended up practising medicine over the phone.
These are the personal experiences of ordinary people who climb a “mountain” daily to have access to quality healthcare services. Services to which they are entitled. These are the stories of tormented patients, whom the healthcare system torments even more than the disease itself.
While all this is happening, breaking news appears on television. Something serious must have happened, I think. “King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer,” the report says. Live connection to the British capital to learn about the monarch’s health news. And then, reports and analyses from royal correspondents follow. Oh yes, there is also this category of journalists in Old Blighty.
I change the channel and come across another live report to London and Buckingham. What the palace announced, where Charles went, the first person he met after the announcement of his illness, the first photo, Prince Harry’s hurried trip to London, and so on.
The same picture is on most news websites, where for a week now, the interest has been dominated by Charles’s cancer, through the keyhole in the luxurious palace. If only they spent a little of the ink to highlight the real problems of the National Health System (NHS), if they made daily correspondences and reports from the Emergency Departments of state hospitals, where patients suffer terribly, maybe something would change. Enough with King Charles’s cancer.
It’s the cancer of our own people that really should be concerning us!
