"Sometimes you do need a bit of help, she has been wonderful"

We’ve been helped by a Macmillan nurse who came and she not only helped us with the cancer or anything else she was also there to help us with other things, because my husband couldn’t use the stairs anymore, he couldn’t bathe or shower.  I was coping with it all on my own, trying to do it , so they started a system, I think it was a trial, where they sent you a Macmillan nurse as like liaison with me and my husband for getting what we needed at that time .

It was the doctors (our local GP practice) that told us about it, and then you get someone come and see you and ask how they can help. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to feed back because this girl has been wonderful, she cares and she helped me so much because I was drowning in it all.  I had so much going on so I want to share this good feedback. I think the service is a trial and I think they are trying to get money to make it a permanent thing which they deserve because a lot of people could be helped by these people and Nichola was made for this job, she has been wonderful.

I’ve had so many people come and go. All I know is I can phone up one day and she is there to help us in any way she can, not just with the cancer but with everything. I’m not good online and so many things need you to go online.  It’s not easy,when you’ve got a very sick husband and everything like that. I said I’m not getting anywhere with these people trying to move us, (as we needed to move house somewhere more suitable for my husbands needs). She came and she listened and she wrote it all down, the next day she rang me and said you’ve been treated appallingly and I’m going to help you out.

She helped me with things like appointments, unfortunately my husband has a neurological problem as well where the nerves in his arms and legs are broken and so he was falling and had all sorts of things going on without the cancer. She was so kind and helped me organise his appointments. Sometimes they send you an appointment and then they cancel it etc and things like that she helped me with because you have so much to do, and you don’t know whether you’re coming or going, so she helped with the process of trying to get another place to live.

We’ve moved house now we’ve got a ground floor and have a wet room now so my husband doesn’t have to climb the stairs.  It’s a warden assisted place.  I even have a gardener now, I can’t believe it myself, it’s for people over 65, the warden comes every morning to make sure you’re okay. And I feel like that wouldn’t have happened without Nicola.

She’s taken us off the books now because she’s gone as far as she can go, and she explained that she can only have so many patients and there’s so many people wanting the service, so asked  it alright if I take you off my books? That was recently but she did add that any time that we needed her we could call her. Sometimes you try and do these things on your own and sometimes you do need a bit of help.

If someone has done a job well then you should say so. She’s been so lovely to us, and you’ve only got to ring her, whatever problem and she’s on the case, when you’ve got all this going on there’s so much to do.

I wasn’t even allowed to go to the hospital after he had surgery, he needed part of his lung removing. The surgeon at Barts hospital rang me on the day of the surgery to tell me it had gone well and to say not to worry and I thought that was wonderful! It was during the pandemic when we weren’t allowed in because of Covid. It was so kind of the surgeon to ring me and let me know he’s alright, because I was sat at some alone all day worrying about him, on my own because of lock down.  They are wonderful at Barts hospital, they really are, and everyone on that team has been absolutely smashing. We have a lot to thank them for and even the aftercare, the medical and clinical oncology teams have all been so kind. After that he had some chemo but the chemo made him so bad, it was because he had this underlying problem which they hadn’t even started to try to understand what was happening with him. It took three years of doing tests to realise it isn’t Parkinson’s its something else.

Thank you so much to Nichola from Macmillan and the team at Barts who have helped us so much.