I asked if you had any messages for other people with cancer, have you got any messages for health professionals.

Yes obviously I was misdiagnosed with cancer and across young people misdiagnosis is a huge, huge issue, and obviously it’s statistically unlikely that young people are going to get cancer, so, but weve got to be realistic, I’ve got, given my doctor some slack about it, it was unlikely I’d be diagnosed cancer but when I’m in the waiting room feeling absolutely rubbish with x amount of symptom statistically it’s more likely that I’ve got something like cancer or it’s more likely something is wrong, you know if there is genuinely something wrong with me that warranted further investigation whatever it was, but just for whatever reason, probably mainly economical reasons, I wasn’t, I wasn’t referred for a further scan. Which is a shame if I was referred for a scan earlier the prognosis might be better, I might not be having all the treatment I’m having now.

The main message is to be aware that a young person might have cancer, and think about the diagnosis.

Yeah especially when they’ve come to this surgery x amount of times, repeatedly, and not had an explanation of what’s wrong or what even could be wrong really.

I reckon that they need to make sure that while this, while what they’re saying can be understood by everybody, sort of if they want to introduce, if they introduce more complex ideas or something like that, just to keep making sure and just generally have patience because they’ve had all these years at university doing all this biology and all sorts of stuff and weve not had that. You know some, depending on how far through your treatment you are, you’ve just been told that you’ve got a life-threatening illness and you want to know information about it, you don’t want lecturing on biology.

So sort of just break it down in to easy to understand bits and just generally try and smile, be friendly and be approachable rather than sort of a frowning sort of not quite sure where you stand with sort of doctor because theres, because it’s much easier if they’re sort of a friendly sort of personality to get on with. And you feel much more easy to open up to, open up to them about any problems or questions, rather than someone who is constantly frowning and looks as though they’ve got the weight of the world on their shoulders. I mean perhaps they’ve got the weight of a couple of lives on their shoulders, but they still need to be approachable. If you see a doctor that’s frowning and looks really stressed, you’re not going to go up and ask them what might be a daft question, you just think ‘Well it’s probably a daft question,’ ask one of the nurses or I’ll just, you know, I’ll just wait and see if I find out some day of my own accord.

I think, when you’re dealing with a child, or when you deal with an adult, whatever’s the matter with them, there are quite set ways that you can deal with them, whereas, sort of, with adults you can be very professional, with the child you are mainly dealing with the adult, or you are dealing with this small child who you don’t really have to explain anything to, you just have to make them feel a bit more happy in the situation that they’re in. With teenagers and sort of the early twenties, you have to put things at their level, and, therefore – and they don’t want to be ignored – they don’t want you to talk to their parents instead of them, they want to know what’s going on and they need to feel that you’re talking to them on their level. So, and that’s quite hard to gauge, but it is something which is really, really important. It’s important not to be too professional and over the top. The first GP that I had actually made me so scared of going to the GPs that I changed GPs after that, and it was, it was his manner. His manner was very professional and it was brilliant, and it was brilliant for everyone else. And until then, I had never had a problem with him. But because it was something that I was so frightened about, and he was so professional about it, I just couldn’t deal with it at all. I needed someone that I could actually go to and talk to about things, so I changed to a GP and she was lovely. She, she would sit down and she would ask how I actually was and that kind of, that kind of thing, so from the from the sort of general practitioner and sort of nurses perspective, they need to be someone that you can chat to about things as well as the medical problems. Especially because I was in hospital for such a long time, I did talk to nurses quite a lot about… random, the Ball I was missing, and what all my friends were wearing and that kind of thing. So it’s more of a, a social worker type side that a nurse or a doctor needs to have if they’re dealing with young people, just to get on their level, and talk about the kinds of things that they want to talk about, especially if they’re in for a long time.

Understanding that you might not necessarily want to be the object of 50 medical students coming round. I never minded, but I know people who, one of the girls I was treated with, really hated it, but she didn’t, she never felt that she could actually say so. And because you’re at quite an embarrassing stage of your life, you don’t necessarily want 50 gorgeous male students looking at you when you’ve got no hair, and you’re, like, five stone. It’s not really something that you’re always going to feel comfortable with. So I think that’s something that’s quite important to consider. I can’t think of anything else. I’m sure I’ll think of something else that’s really important [laughs], but I can’t think at the moment.

Yeah. I think one thing that I’d tell doctors would be to make the, make the, to have more sort of, I know they’re really clever and everything, because they have, like, big degrees in this and that, but to be, at the same time, more social, because all my doctors were always very were frown like, ‘This is this’, and they’d point out. It was very serious and everything, not so fun. I think if they were, I know it can make you sound, it’s like the doctors should be really, like, professional, but they’ve got to be professional with kids, so they should kind of find a middle balance kind of thing as well.

Do you think they should learn to communicate with young people?

Yeah. Yeah. Not with slang and wearing bandanas and everything but [laughs] be, be a bit more social, I think, and talk to them properly, without their stethoscopes on and everything, and act all professional all the time. To be more relaxed with them. I think the patient feels a bit more at ease with them as well, feels more comfortable with them. Yeah, because although hes got, like a, like a science appearance sort of thing the doctors with their jackets and all formal all the time, sure like sort of business, not really, well, because it is your health, they should be more personal than anything else, and you don’t feel like that sometimes, because the way, when they, when they talk to you, it’s like making a deal about something. Not very social.

When the doctors work with, kind of, us as young people, I think they should know that we are people, and they should never, ever talk to our parents without talking to us. Too many doctors come to your bed, and they’ll just look at your Mum or your Dad, or whoever’s there. Or they’ll even just talk to the nurse, in front of you. Were people of our own and we can understand a lot more than they give us credit for, so they should talk directly to us. And they should try not to sort of blind us with all the long words that they like to use. They should talk to us and try to explain things as best as they can.

So in other words they should take care of the language?

Yeah, I think doctors should look at the way they speak to people. You might get – you know they might go and see some teenager who can understand all the words they’re using, but most of the time, you know, we are too ill to even think about what that word means, so they should come and they should explain it – not that they – they should be careful to not explain it, you know, too babyish, you know we want to be talked to as equals. We don’t want to be talked to like were children really.