Trish Kelly on the the failure to offer pain relief for gynaecological investigations, and Sue Ward on the Queen’s access to the best healthcare
Re your report (‘The pain is inhumane’: how NHS gynaecology delays affect women’s health, 2 June), in 2008 I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. The diagnostic process involved having a hysteroscopy, where a camera is inserted through the vagina and cervix into the uterus.
No anaesthesia or sedation was offered, and I found it so painful that the nurse who was holding my hand asked the doctor to stop and I later had the procedure under general anaesthetic. A couple of years later I was referred to a gastroenterology department for bowel problems following the 20 sessions of radiotherapy I’d had for the cancer, and I had a colonoscopy. It was normal for the procedure to be carried out with sedation – no question of doing it without.
