"Staff shortages and shortfalls in oncology patients"

What happened.. Long story short I'm an oncology patient by chance where a malignant ovarian cancer biopsy result went 18 months cast aside and forgotten /misplaced before I found out. That event was resolved however 6 monthly follow up appointments are constantly being followed up by myself to ensure they are done in a timely fashion.

I recently discovered my tumour markers are rising again and need more scans to find out what's going on. Not only are my tumour markers going up but it seems I'm also symptomatic. I now require pet/ct scans as well as pelvic ultrasounds. Not only are there only a few select places that do pet scans but it is also quite an extensive wait of weeks and even months to get in to these places even when it's classed as urgent.

The referral for my scans have been sent to one place with the instructions to do my own background work if I would like, to try and get an earlier appointment. I'm happy with that however each place I call tell me they need the referral letter to book pet scans. I try to reach someone at oncology at kemh so they can forward a referral on but it appears they are too short staffed and have quite a backlog of work to catch up on. I believe, as a result, calls and voicemails are going over a week before I realise no one has called me back.

When I eventually manage to get a call through to someone and explain my situation I am met with a very, I feel, apologetic staff member who explains they are on their own at the moment as they are short staffed for a while. The staff member is very nice and helpful however, in my opinion, it is very evident that there are life threatening shortfalls with endoscopy and oncology.

While I believe this staff member I spoke to is doing everything they can to keep up, and I want to make it clear that I feel they were in no way passing the buck at all, this is a hospital management and staffing issue and in my opinion it is not good enough. I believe staff shortages have meant that the wait list (I understand is outsourced to the private sector) for a pet scan has blown out from what would have been days/weeks has seemingly now blown out to weeks/month.

How did this make me feel? Forgotten, I feel like my life is in the hands of people who are not capable of saving it.