Woman with Stage 4 cancer struggled to get diagnosis during pandemic

By the time Joan Durney was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer she felt angry and let down by a healthcare system that seemed inaccessible during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Having recovered from breast cancer previously, the 63-year-old Tralee resident said she knew something was “eating” at her body and that her condition was “deteriorating rapidly”. In early January, during the height of the third wave, Ms Durney tried to get an appointment to be seen by her general practitioner, but she was only offered over-the-phone consultations and painkillers. She felt like she was “falling through the cracks”, she said: “I could get people to process me on phone calls, but I struggled to get a physical appointment.”

Worried about her deteriorating health, she contacted an oncologist in Waterford who had treated her for breast cancer five years previously. Knowing her medical history, the specialist sent on a referral letter but Ms Durney was told she would have to wait two to three weeks to be seen by that hospital. She rang other hospitals around the country trying to get an earlier appointment, but she was told there were none available.

Meanwhile, the pain went from a twinge in her hip to feeling like her lungs were “wrapped in barbed wire”. “I was struggling to walk… There was obviously something wrong with me and I was begging for somebody to see me for an MRI,” she said.

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It took about three weeks to be seen at the Bon Secour Hospital in Tralee. The morning after her MRI scan she was informed her breast cancer had returned and spread to her lungs and her bones. It was Stage 4. There was no cure, she was told.

Speaking to the Irish Times on the first day of her palliative treatment, Ms Durney “could not speak highly enough” about her treatment post-diagnosis. The nurses and doctors have been “great”, she said. The issue during this pandemic has been “getting in the door” of a restricted healthcare system, an issue she did not battle when facing cancer five years ago and was seen by doctors “within days”.

“I was given a cancer nurse, a doctor, and I had full information. This time I was out there fighting for my life and for someone to please listen to me,” she said.There is a limited service for cancer patients, as Covid-19 seems to be the “only show in town”, she said.

Ms Durney said she feels “let down” by a healthcare system that had been good to her before.

She added: “I feel cancer care in this country was an arms around you sort of system in which you were looked after. The difference now is you cannot get into that system.”

A spokeswoman for the Health Service Executive said the organisation cannot comment on individual cases, but she acknowledged that the current third wave from mid to late December has “again impacted service delivery”.

“Cancer services were again maintained for urgent referrals, time-critical surgery and other cancer treatments as far as possible,” she said, adding that alternative pathways, such as private sector capacity, have been utilised where possible.

The HSE’s plan for 2021 is “not one of resumption of cancer services per se but to ensure that any backlogs are addressed as a priority and patients can receive timely care”, the spokeswoman added.