Subject: My Experience With Delayed Access to Bladder Cancer Diagnosis in Alberta
Dear Marg,
I would like to share my recent experience with Alberta’s health-care system because I believe it illustrates the very real consequences of delays in accessing timely diagnostic testing.
I developed hematuria, and subsequent imaging identified a lesion in my bladder that is suspicious for malignancy. I was advised that further investigation by a urologist and cystoscopy is required to determine whether this is bladder cancer.
Unfortunately, timely access to diagnostic testing has been extremely difficult. I was initially facing approximately an eight-week wait for the CT scan, despite the concern about a possible bladder tumour. Because I felt that waiting that long was simply too risky, I paid personally to have the CT scan performed privately.
That CT urogram identified a 1.3 × 0.9 cm filling defect on the posterior bladder wall, suspicious for malignancy, and recommended urology consultation. I am now faced with another potentially significant wait for the cystoscopy that is necessary to obtain a definitive diagnosis.
For me, this is particularly frightening because my mother died within three months of being diagnosed with bladder cancer, involving the same area of the bladder. I understand that my mother’s experience does not determine what my own diagnosis or outcome will be, but it makes timely investigation especially important to me.
I do not believe that someone with imaging suspicious for malignancy should have to wait weeks or months simply to find out whether they have cancer.
As a result, I have now made the difficult decision to travel to the Mayo Clinic in the United States and pay out of pocket in order to obtain timely specialist assessment and a proper diagnosis. This means not only paying for medical care, but also the additional costs of travel and accommodation—expenses I would not be incurring if timely diagnostic care were available to me at home.
I am grateful that I have the ability to pursue private care, but that is precisely what concerns me. A person’s ability to obtain a timely cancer diagnosis should not depend upon whether they can afford to pay privately or travel outside Canada. Many Albertans simply do not have that option.
I am not asking for preferential treatment. I am asking for timely access to medically necessary diagnostic care when cancer is suspected.
My experience has already required me to pay privately for a CT scan, and now to leave the country and incur substantially greater expenses to obtain the diagnostic care I need.
When cancer is suspected, timely diagnosis should be part of our public health-care system—not something Albertans have to purchase elsewhere because they cannot afford to wait.
Please feel free to include my experience in the information you are compiling.
R. B.