We have just put up a new poll about after care. I hope that the questions will be straightforward to answer. It is all about after care, especially when there may be other health issues that affect us. One of the issues might be the extent to which the cancer treatment overshadows everything else, and perhaps how one affects the other, especially when different hospital departments are involved.
Please feel free to add your comments about the poll. I think it might be one of those subjects which develop as we go along!
Further to my suggestion for a poll, I am confused! I thought we had discussed the wording, and as you know I was very keen that the wording referred to how monitoring post surgery was applied rather than using the word aftercare. I assume aftercare especially, emergency ie. stretching etc. is generally ok. The issue that concerns me most is the actual monitoring or lack of it. Some OC patients seem to be left pretty much alone and unsupported after the post surgery appointment and only seen if they present with symptoms rather than being offered scans, blood tests etc. in order to detect any early signs of secondaries. I cannot see how the stats can improve unless this followup monitoring matches that offered to other cancers.
When I was doing the questions, finally, I did change the wording because I thought that we had to split the issues, somehow, between what gets done for cancer issues, and what gets done for other issues. Hence the way that the questions are worded.
Am I right in thinking that for the next / a future poll, you would therefore like something that concentrates on how hospitals deal with patients who fear recurrence? If I had added a further question about this on the after care/ monitoring poll we might have had issues in how people would respond when they might have wanted to tick more than one answer. So the range of answers have to be confined to one scale of responses to virtually a single issue.
You cannot tick more than one response, so this means that we have to be very simple in the choices we present. It's really good that we have suggestions for polls, but sometimes it takes a bit of discussion to clarify how the questions are put - and you will see from the above that I may not have got it right yet!
It's a personal thing, for me it's been excellent. I was told while I was in hospital they had got everything, just not in the clear. I had problems swallowing within the first 3 months, when I had my first post op appointment I mentioned it and was investigated straight away.
I've just had 6 monthly appointments ever since. I've never had a need or wanted to have them in my life any more than that. I'm sure if I was worried about something I'd be able to contact someone to talk to.
If people would mind saying if they have been offerred a routine (as apposed to presenting with possible symptoms) scan since surgery I would be very interested. And if so, at what intervals?
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