Wes Streeting, the future of cancer care is in your hands – don’t let us patients down | UK | News
Robert Fisk says the ball is now in Wes Streeting’s court (Image: Daily Express/PA)
I sat and discussed the day’s events with colleagues while filling up on a calorie-filled, fat-packed full English breakfast for lunch. While I was wiping the beans in tomato sauce off my chin, I picked up a copy of the Daily Star that someone had left on the table. When I turned the front page, I was shocked to see someone I knew on the third page. She was topless and her photo was accompanied by a caption about donuts and being a baker. I texted him during a short walk back to the office and he told me he forgot to tell me he had a job and was a little uncomfortable with the title since he was an undergrad in college and not a baker.
It was almost 20 years ago and I hadn’t thought about this moment until I looked at Twitter (I know the official name is X but it’s still Twitter to me) late last Thursday and saw someone I know was on the front page of the Daily Express the next day. He wasn’t my old roommate. It was me. It was a shock to see it on social media and even more shocked when it was mentioned on Sky News that night and on LBC by Nick Ferrari the next day.
Read more: The moment Nick Ferrari grilled the health minister over the Daily Express cancer campaign
Read more: ‘We wrote to Wes Streeting to demand significant NHS change for patients’
My big pink face, ruined from chemotherapy, was featured on the front cover of the newspaper that had been a part of my life since I was a little girl, and I was always tasked with going to the store and buying it for my grandmother.
My main priority back then was to read the Garfield cartoon on the way home, but now my priorities are very different.
As someone with incurable bowel cancer, I have transformed cartoons for CT scans and chemotherapy sessions, and have dedicated the rest of my life to ensuring cancer patients have access to mental health support both during and after treatment.
Anyone who read this column last week, or bought the paper with my big face on it, will know that I wrote to Wes Streeting last Wednesday as part of the Daily Express’ Cancer Care campaign, explaining why this support is so vital and urging him and his colleague Ashley Dalton to meet me before Labour’s cancer plan for Britain launches on Wednesday (4 February).
And now, at the time of this writing, we are playing the waiting game for an answer. I feel just as nervous as I did when I emailed someone at a previous newspaper to ask them out (this isn’t the best way to ask, but open-plan newsrooms and working different shifts in different departments have made it the only way).
She said no at the time and said she was just getting over a previous breakup. Today, there is no reason for the Minister of Health to reject our campaign demands.
I don’t want to date him, but I do want all cancer patients to have a “holistic needs assessment” after receiving their devastating diagnosis. This will give them the chance to talk about how they are feeling and work with their medical team to get all the support they need.
And I ask him to instruct hospital trusts to treat the mental health side effects of cancer by regularly monitoring their patients’ emotional state and referring them to support when needed.
Some hospital bosses may say they can’t afford this, as budgets are shrinking day by day. I say you can’t afford not to do this because it would improve the lives of millions of people now and in the future.
The government needs to ensure that all necessary funds are available for charities, hospitals and other organizations to provide patients with all the help they need.
