'Since my terminal was diagnosed a number of years ago, I have grown to understand my body more than I ever did before. Indeed, understanding my illness has helped me to come to terms with it; I have grown more accepting of its presence in my life. I seem able to talk about it without bitterness, anger or resentment and accept it now a constant companion of my remaining days. Because my illness is an inextricable part of me and a companion that will never desert me, I find myself more able to embrace it now, rather than view it as a deadly enemy. It is easier to make the big 'C' in my life one of compassion, care, concern and companionship as opposed to that of cancer.
After my visit to the hospital yesterday for my fourth bout of chemotherapy, after protest, I managed to get the D.N.R. that had been placed on my medical file during my six-week hospital stay over Christmas just gone when I was very ill, removed from my file. Although a minor victory, the fact that the law gives the practitioners a medical right to place one on your file without your knowledge and without your consent if there is every chance one will die, I find disgusting. I reminded my consultant that the first Hippocratic principle of all medical people when I was a boy was 'Do no harm.'
I awoke this morning to the television news that 'Nice', another of those 'august' medical body who considers itself a branch of government financial rectitude, has recently decided about how they will respond in the future when they have spent their allocated budget for the year. Already they have the power to keep drugs off the market (including a number of cancer drugs that are known to greatly extend and save lives) if they consider them too expensive to administer. The news presenter today said that 'Nice' has now decided to give itself the power to delay any drug, life-saving or otherwise, for up to three years when under economic pressure. It looks like the proud and often boasted claim not to have a 'two tier N.H.S. holds as much truth as a politician composing a manifesto at election time. It is apparent that the only way that the public will be able to access such drugs if needed in the immediate future will be to go private. This is clearly 'one law for the rich and one for the poor!' I don't suppose it will be much longer before 'economics' encourages euthanasia to creep into British law by back-door means!
Also, the more I learn of the medical practices that pertain to one's life which exist today without the knowledge of the great mass of the public (even the nursing staff), the more grateful I am that I am a person who is prepared not to rely on the medics or conventional medicine alone for the oversight of my continued health. I will never think badly of the overwhelming number of good professionals in our hospitals and surgeries, or think badly of the N.H.S. or make them an enemy, but during the past week I have learned not to be so naive about some of their legal yet unethical practices and not to instantly befriend their oft pronounced ethical standing in my own value range.
Furthermore; I object to the way that they issue their news to the public and unless one is constantly a user of the internet (which many elderly people are not), how is one to find out? A lady called Liza Moore could have been speaking about the unethical practices of our N.H.S today when she said; 'It has taken stealth and some underhandedness. It has taken clarity of purpose when the moment called for dreamy abandon. It has practised withdrawal.'
I will always praise and love the N.H.S. but based upon my own experience of it since Boxing Day,2016, I will never again view it wearing rose-tinted glasses." William Forde: March 16th, 2017