Today Rhonda Oliver of Advocacy in Barnet highlights some of the difficulties faced by those attending chemotherapy appointments:
As many older people affected by cancer will tell you, getting to and from their chemotherapy appointments can be a nightmare.
Public transport in the UK is dirty and overcrowded and people worry about picking up illnesses when their immune system is suppressed by chemotherapy. Journeys to and from Central London from the London Borough of Barnet may involve multiple bus and tube journeys. For older people affected by cancer the prospect of such journeys when they are feeling exhausted and unwell is very dispiriting and when they finally get home they are too tired to prepare a meal and eat it.
“My daughter’s main hospital is in London and parking is nigh on impossible. We are unable to use public transport owing to her condition. She has an inoperable brain tumour which causes her to have frequent seizures, making it very unsafe to use the London Underground”.
If patients are eligible for the ambulance service there is usually a long delay while the ambulance winds its way around Barnet. One of our clients said:
“We do qualify for hospital transport, but this frequently entails a 2 hour wait for our journey home and this is extremely tiring and stressful, especially as the journey itself usually takes an hour or so – depending on the traffic – and whether or not there are any other pick-ups/drop offs en route”.
Many patients feel too unwell to drive themselves and may have to rely on friends and family to drive them to their appointments. Parking is often difficult to find and the parking fees may be prohibitively expensive. There is also the stress of worrying about an appointment over-running time, with the prospect of a parking fine to add to the misery.
So how was Advocacy in Barnet able to help to reduce the burden of transport on these patients? It did so as the result of an extremely generous grant from Barnet CancerLink, a local non-medical Barnet charity. This grant enabled us to work with two local taxi companies to provide a free taxi service for patients to and from chemotherapy and related cancer medical appointments. The grant also enabled us to provide a cooked meal on request when people were too exhausted to cook after their appointments.
We were able to help 100 people affected by 22 different types of cancer: 53 females aged 25-84 and 47 males aged 51-82. Some people had multiple return journeys.
“Being able to book a cab, which will turn up to collect us in a very reasonable time and which is just for ourselves, makes a huge difference to our day. My daughter is much more relaxed which has a direct effect on the number of seizures she has”.
“This last week alone, my husband went back and forth to Barnet General on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The total cost to him was £72. The outlay since August last year would have exceeded £2000 had it not been for Advocacy in Barnet and some wonderful neighbours”.
The grant took effect from December 2016 until June 2017, when the grant was exhausted. We are very grateful to CancerLink Barnet for enabling us to demonstrate that people living with cancer are in desperate need of help with their transport needs and to show its impact on cancer patients in Barnet.
Rhonda Oliver, Project Manager, Barnet Macmillan Cancer Advocacy.
Older People Living with Cancer 