"Consider the carers"

My wife has just been treated for breast cancer - successfully we hope - and we have been very pleased witht the tretament she's recieved - courteous and on time almost throughout.

My complaint is that at no stage was I (her husband) ever asked if the schedule of tretament was OK for me to fit in around. I am self-employed so obviously am a lot more flexible than those that are employed - nevertheless, the schedule we were given for her radiotherapy resulted in me having to make a lot of changes to pre-arranged appointments with my clients - in some cases several times as the hospital would not give us the full six-week schedule all at once on the grounds that changes might be needed! (we were only given on day at a time.) One client finally got to the stage where he couldn't wait for me any longer, so he had to take his work elsewhere. That was £15,000 of consultancy business I lost - at a time when I needed all I could get and we needed the worry like a hole in the head.

We are grateful that she is now on the mend - but it's time I feel that hospital adminstrators - and especially consultants - relaised that their arrogance has a serious impact on others and the patient is not the only one affected by the need to travel daily to hospital.

We attended Kettering General for Chemo - no complaints there - and Northampton General for Radiotherapy which is where the problem lies - I was not even included in discussions of the treatment.