"The experience my mother had"

Mum was given a cancellation to attend the urology dept in December 2018 around Christmas. She eventually received information through the post to say it was a non stop clinic appointment be prepared to be there for 3-4 hours. She had already had an ultrasound scan done at QMH in November but we were not told any results, only that she had been referred to urology.

She was seen not long after we arrived by the SN who booked her in went through all of mums symptoms and how long it's been going on etc. Described what would happen. I asked at this point if I could accompany her as mum is very needle phobic and doesn't hear great plus I am a nurse so could explain things to her in layman's terms. We were asked to sit in waiting room again. My father was with us and he had brought his paper to keep him busy in waiting room until we were done, knowing I would be there with mum.

We were called into another room for what we thought was the procedure. A doctor was there sitting at a desk, there was a bed and procedure trolley sitting all ready to go. The doctor looked like they had just finished a 48 hour shift and looked shattered. Any way they basically said that they would not be able to do the procedure today as the UUS had shown a tumor and they need to give mum a GA to do the procedure to scrape away this tumor.

My heart sank, and it was delivered quite matter of fact. There was no other staff in the room on the doctor. I know that mum was struggling to understand him and as soon as tumor was said she heard nothing else. We were then told she would be recalled with in 4 weeks for CT scans and the procedure under GA. We were given a leaflet with cancer specialist nurse on it as a point of contact and told we could go! !