‘I’ve accepted my death sentence but I fear for the lives of others’ | UK | News

A seriously ill mother whose “life was saved” by the kind of service Wes Streeting has pledged all cancer patients will have access to fears others won’t be as lucky. Louise Beevers was pregnant with her fourth child when she was told she had breast cancer, and then a month after her daughter was born, she was told the disease had spread to her lungs. 

Her medical team said they aimed to make her life as comfortable as possible, but said she could not be cured. Struggling to deal with the fact that she won’t live to see her children grow up, the 42-year-old was very truthful when she had a chat with a wellbeing practitioner during a chemotherapy session.

The mother-of-four said: “One of the questions on a questionnaire she asked me to fill in was, have you had thoughts to end your own life? 

“And I had to be truthful because the last thing I want is for my cancer to reach my brain and distort my memories and potentially have my last days not remembering who my children are, or my parents are, or who my closest friends are, and then that be their last memory of me alive. 

“And so I was very honest and said, I will remove myself if I know that is how the end is going to be. So in essence, I was admitting to the fact that I’d had ideas to end my own life, but obviously not at that time.”

This led to a referral to the East Midlands Cancer Alliance centre for psychosocial health at the end of 2024. Ms Beevers, from Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, says everything she has done with therapists at the centre is the reason she is still alive today.

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She said: “If you imagine a rose, and you’re just peeling back the petals, and eventually you’ll get to the core where the seeds lie, and the actual centre of the rose, and what makes that centre its centre, and then we’ll put all those petals back, and then live your life, bloom, and that’s essentially what Dr Adam Hill actually did.

« He equipped me with the mental stability to say what’s important to me, what makes me happy, because ultimately, if I’m happy, I can be the best parent I possibly can be to my children. 

“Whereas if I’m wallowing, and being very sorry for myself, because this is the hand I’ve been dealt, how good a parent am I going to be to my children?”

There have been rumours about the service closing for a year, and just days after the Health Secretary announced that all cancer patients in England would receive a personal cancer plan, covering their treatment, mental health support, and help getting back to work, the local NHS in Nottinghamshire announced a decision about its future.

The integrated care board for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire says the service is not closing, but will instead be run by another part of the local NHS.

Ms Beevers, who is a member of the service’s patient collaboration group, says she is worried that the treatment patients receive from the new provider won’t be up to the standard she has had.

She said: “To discover that they were losing their funding, anger underestimates the first emotion I felt. The second emotion that I felt was sheer sadness. »

“And sadly, I have a close friend who’s recently been diagnosed with cancer, but she’s not going to receive the same mental health support that I’ve received. 

“And therefore, I don’t think she will fare as well on this journey that she’s on. She’s admitted to me, she’s done a wellbeing survey, she scored incredibly low, and she’s really not coping with this diagnosis.

“She really isn’t. She is absolutely a prime candidate to receive the assistance I’ve received. If she were to go and receive help from the EMCA service, her outlook would be utterly different to the one she’s now trying to get through.

“And I’ve got to say, she’s trying to get through this as a solo, because right now, she’s not receiving any assistance.

“So while we’re all being supposedly reassured that the facilities are still there, they’re going to be redirected to another outlet. As far as I’m aware, there’s no further funding being put in place for these designated services. 

“There’s no further staffing being put into these services. Therefore, how long are these waiting lists? And if those waiting lists are stupidly long, people such as my friends, who are already struggling, how bad are they going to get before help actually reaches them?”

When asked about the changes to the service, a spokesperson for the Integrated Care Board said: “Funding for the service by East Midlands Cancer Alliance was due to come to an end, and therefore Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB have collaborated with their neighbouring ICBs across the East Midlands to ensure the service continues. 

“In Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, we have commissioned Nottingham University Hospitals Trust to deliver the service, offering the benefit of a locally integrated service with more streamlined referral processes, as this trust already provides Level 4 psycho-social services.

“There are no pauses to referrals. As soon as the previous service stopped taking new referrals, the new service provider began taking them immediately.

“As with other services we commission, we set out the specification for the service and monitor the quality of provision. In this case, the service specification retains the same access, scope and quality measures. The new provider is managing to absorb the additional patients due to relatively small numbers.”

Whatever you’re going through, you can call the Samaritans free at any time from any phone on 116 123. Lines are open 24 hours a day. You can also email jo@samaritans.org