For this to make any sense, I have to back track just a wee bit. You see, by oddest of coincidences my mother, who lives in Surrey, BC, was also diagnosed with breast cancer right around the same time as I was. Her cancer is not the same as mine, and it was caught early enough that she was offered (and gladly accepted) surgery nearly right away. She then had to wait some time before seeing her oncologist.
So while I was enduring the agonizing wait to see the surgeon in Victoria, fearing that she wasn’t even going to be the right person to help me, my parents brought my case to the attention of mum’s oncologist in Surrey. From there everything happened incredibly quickly. The referral was made on Tuesday, my first appointment with an oncologist was on Thursday, and my first chemotherapy treatment happened the next Monday. Just a week from referral to treatment, and on the Labour Day holiday no less!
I can’t explain to you the relief I felt when I met the oncologist in Surrey and knew that I would be looked after. I don’t remember the words she used, but what I heard was, “I see you, I hear you, you are in the right place, I know what to do and I will look after you.” From that moment on, much of the heavy burden of fear and anxiety washed away. I relaxed and let the doctors do the planning – all I had to do from now on was follow instructions. And ride a whole lot of ferries!
The very next day, I kept my long-awaited appointment with the surgeon in Victoria as described in an earlier post. She agreed that in my case it would have been better to be referred straight to medical oncology rather than surgery, and she was relieved to hear that I had already had my first chemo treatment, albeit in another health authority.
Kind-hearted physicians come to my rescue
I truly feel that the physicians involved in getting me into care at the BC Cancer Centre in Surrey (a four hour journey by car and ferry) saved my life. I don’t want to think about the potential for metastases if I had waited another 4 – 6 weeks for care in Victoria. I’m not sure how they would feel about me publishing their names even to say a heartfelt thank you, but I have sent a personal thank-you to my mum’s oncologist who welcomed my referral, to a very kind physician colleague of my father’s for agreeing to make the referral, and to a cardiologist friend of mine for connecting me with a wonderful new GP at home in Victoria. I will be forever grateful to them for their help.
Now, I am very aware that not very many people will have a parent undergoing cancer diagnosis at the same time as themselves. Nor would they necessarily know whether the wait time they’ve been given is reasonable. My sense is that for the majority of breast cancer cases, the growth rate is relatively slow, surgery is the best course of action, and a waiting period of several weeks is medically reasonable. None of those things applied to me, so I started asking questions. In another post, I’ll explain how I found the “gap in the system” that let me down – and the work being done so that it won’t happen to anyone else.
