NHS Death Row: Entry in online diary: More devastation

Entry in online diary: More devastation

Update: 27 March 2004

Alan has now had the decision from the NHS about funding this life-saving operation. The decision is a resounding NO. They won’t do it. Alan’s life has got a price on it and he’s too expensive to save.

If there is a lesson to be learned here by anyone in the UK who ever reads the narratives on this site it’s to get some private medical insurance that is underwritten to include surgery outside of this pitiful country.

How many women need to stand up to Britain’s cash-strapped National Health Service and strip its policies bare to reveal a strange, ingrown corruption that declares some patients inoperable, and sends them home to die, in order to balance their books and reduce waiting lists?The dual culprits in my husbands' potential demise were a nastily burgeoning aneurysm on his aorta, and a National Health Service so good at hiding life-saving information, even from itself, that it could spend as much to kill him as to save him.

When a doctor can save a life, he is supposed to do it, but some keep silent about expensive treatment. Dead patients don't cost the NHS a thing.This could happen to any one of us.

When you are given a prognosis with no hope, please don’t stop there. The worldwide web is very useful to help research anything and everything that might apply to your illness. My own research found life-saving information in the USA, The Netherlands, Germany and Norway. But what I really needed was right here in the UK - the NHS just didn't want me to know about it. This story has been featured in Take a Break magazine in the UK.