Frances, as usual, you're so right. People seem to bury their heads in the sand until it happens to them or their loved one's. In my village, we have a five year old boy with an inoperable brain tumour, and the only hope for him is SIRT - only problem is that the SECSCG do not fund SIRT. Now our Village is a very community minded and raises money for everything from the church to the Brownies, to the post office, but there has been complete silence concerning the little boy. Maybe it's just too harrowing to contemplate or maybe cancer is still taboo, or maybe people think they can't change the funding policy of the SECSCG, or maybe people are too busy -I just don't know. What I do know is that when I'm told that patients are waiting six months for radiotherapy, or are being sent 40 miles away to have it, or that there is no tissue paper on the examination couch because the budget has been spent, I feel very cross. Sussex spends twice as much on mental health services as cancer, because it prioritises mental health. If cancer patients joined together to jump up and down, priorities would change.
