The NHS is a funny fish. It often kind of almost works brilliantly. Almost but frustratingly, not quite.
I had this thing on the back of my shoulder which, being where it was, I couldn’t quite see. I could feel it though. A moley, warty thing. I’ll spare you a fuller description.
And so I embarked upon my tried-and-tested routine for dealing with vaguely troubling symptoms: 1. Pretend it’s not there. 2. Acknowledge it is. 3. Convince myself it’s growing. 4. Get a loved one to take a photo of it. 5. Examine photo, gagging slightly. 6. Send to doctor friend, who says go to GP. 7. Forget about it. 8. Remember it. 9. Try and fail to get GP appointment. 10. Forget about it again. 11. Remember it again. 12. Try harder to get GP appointment and therefore succeed.
All this time of course, I’m veering between two opposing convictions: one that it’s fatal, two that it’s nothing. And in the gap between those things, nothing happens.
Furthermore, I should confess that between stages 5 and 6, I complicated matters by picking the bloody thing almost clean off. It came back with a vengeance, looking angrier than before. So whatever I consider to be the shortcomings of the NHS, I’m ever mindful that often they’re dealing with chumps like me.
The GP said it was probably nothing but I should get it checked. She gave me a referral code to log in and secure my appointment. So far so good. She said not to worry about the words “suspected”, “urgent” and “cancer” on the form, as this was just to get the whole thing moving. Nice. Reassuring, I think. And the referral system seemed robust. Good use of IT, technology, the app etc. Well done, everybody.
I burrowed into the website, filled in lots of things, moving like I was doing well at a video game from one level to the next. And then a dead end. A dead end in the form of a message that there were no appointments available at the hospital to which I’d been referred. And, as far as I could see, no appointments anywhere else. And, as with a video game, there’s no one to call. Shrug. There was a box to leave a message/wail of despair, so I put in my number and email and hoped someone would be in touch.
If I’d got a holding email advising not to panic and that they’d be in touch, that would have helped
Two days later I’d heard not a peep. Even if I’d got a holding email advising not to panic and that they’d be in touch, that would have helped. In the absence of that, for all I knew I was lost forever in the system. A lack of trust on my behalf perhaps? Possibly. If so, my bad. But I considered my options. I could wait, possibly in vain, to hear from someone. Or I could go back to my GP and take up more of her time. Or go private.
One specialist had no appointments until December but would look at a photo of what I was worried about for £250. The cheek of it. In the end, I found a £210 appointment at a skin clinic in a swanky part of town. Obviously I’m fortunate to be able to countenance going private. I did so partly because the anxiety was doing my head in; partly out of thinking at least I was saving the NHS the bother.
This place was in a little mews. The air was fragrant. The receptionist looked like a model. I stammered something about a warty lesion and soon a charming dermatologist led me to her consulting room. “Let’s check you all over,” she said.
I stripped down to my pants for her to commence an exhaustive assessment of all my blemishes. Very few were moles. Except when she had a look at my bottom, at which point she exclaimed that I had more moles there than everywhere else put together. I felt a flush of pride, for some reason. I won’t tell you where she looked next, save to say, rather her than me. And she was polite enough to ask permission first. The whole process, which was leisurely and stressful in equal measure, took 45 minutes.
As for the thing on my shoulder, it needed to come off and be sent away to be checked, just in case. For this the price was £610. She said that I might as well wait for the NHS to get in touch and get it done for nothing. But this didn’t feel like cricket to me either.
As I mulled it over, my phone rang. The NHS had suddenly sprung to life, rather too urgently for my liking, and within minutes I was making my way to a major teaching hospital in a less swanky part of town. No messing around here counting the moles on my arse cheeks, I tell you. The dermatologist called me in, sat me down and had a look at my thing. He said it might or might not be cancer, but either way needed digging out sooner rather than later, and they’d be in touch.
I was in and out of there in 10 minutes flat. He’d said basically the same as the gentle woman had told me only an hour earlier, albeit making the cancer/not cancer outcome sound more like a 50/50 shot. If I was rating the experience on Trustpilot I’d have said it was bracingly businesslike, if a little lacking in the bedside-manner department. But fine, no complaints.
Then, 10 days after my double-derm day I’d still not heard a thing about an appointment for the excision, and there was no one to call. My faith in the system was again ebbing away so I resolved to find £610 and be done with it. At which point I suddenly got a phone call, a text, an email and a message to the NHS app. From no communication, to too much.
So it is, that at the time of writing, I’m off back to see the same brusque bloke to have the offending whatever-it-is excised. Bring it on. I doubt it’ll take him long. Let’s start bringing this saga to an end.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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