‘They advertise and say: “The NHS is there for you”. But it isn’t!’

• WE hear the authorities are satisfied with the new working of the NHS and foresee keeping it like this when the Covid-19 is gone.

They say 85 per cent of patients report satisfaction too. Well nobody has asked me, my sisters, or my friends, like me, over 75 years.

I and one sister don’t have a computer. The other does but uses it with great stress; my closest friends don’t.

I only have a very unsophisticated camera. I live alone so how am I supposed to take a photo, for example, of that suspicious place on my back?

I’ve already had an abrasion removed, where a GP had thought it benign, and I was only allowed to have it removed because it was in an awkward place. A biopsy showed it was pre-cancerous.

How is my sister supposed to have a diagnosis on her knee without the GP watching it move?

There are so many things a doctor could only be able to pick up by seeing a patient. So often the most embarrassing or worrying things are left till last after making the appointment for something else.

They advertise and say: “The NHS is there for you”. But it isn’t!

Hospital appointments looked forward to are cancelled or turned into phone calls with no human contact.

I’d had a problem with a tooth and tried for an appointment as it was causing pain. They said they were only there for emergencies. A few days later a big lump broke off and I was told “almost certainly we’ll take it out.” I don’t want to lose it!

I used to have a feeling of security with my health centre but I don’t any more.

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