“I have enough to worry about about the results of my tests without adding tension because I don’t know if I’m going to get them done in time for my appointment with the oncologist. It’s unnecessary,” says Aida Fernández, a 46-year-old from Burgos with extensive experience as an oncology patient who confesses to being very tired of managing appointments to have a CT scan at the HUBU. She is so fed up with having to insist and insist to get this diagnostic test done in time for her visit to Oncology that the latest mishap in this regard has caused her to decide to publicly denounce a problem that, she knows, does not affect only her. In fact, this newspaper has exposed it several times and in headlines with bold type. But, far from being corrected, it is getting worse. And Fernández raises loud and clear two questions that dozens of hospital users ask themselves: “Why if I come, complain, complain and complain, can they give me an appointment on a Friday for the following Monday? “Why isn’t it done like this from the beginning?”
Fernández was diagnosed in 2007 with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system that originated in the mediastinum, between the lungs, and was treated with chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The disease went into complete remission and she returned to her work as an architect, until 2018, when she noticed a lump in her breast that, once again, made her an oncology patient.
Once the process was over, she returned to her daily routine with the only peculiarity that her colds lasted a long time; something that she always considered collateral damage of the lymphoma and the therapy. But a few days before the state of alarm was declared due to the pandemic, in March 2020, her family doctor decided to refer her to Pulmonology. And the conclusion was, once again, that Fernández had cancer. Breast cancer and with metastasis in a vertebra. There is no cure, but the positive thing about the diagnosis is that, among the metastatic types, her type of cancer has a better prognosis and several therapeutic options.
(More information in Wednesday’s print edition of Diario de Burgos)
