Umeå University Hospital

Yesterday (Tuesday) my Mom received a letter stating that she should appear at the University Hospital in Umeå on Thursday morning for a blood test and to meet with an Oncologist.  Terrific, you may think - well, Umeå is located 387 km (241 miles) away from our city!!!

Our city of Östersund is great in so many ways, but the medical service a cancer patient recieves is unsettling and incompetent.  It is with mixed emotions that I choose to write about it, because the nurses that take care of my Mother are fantastic and the doctors truly do all they can, but unfortunately they CAN'T even answer some of our questions.  It is not their job... one is a surgeon (a terrific one at that) and the other an MD - cancer is not their specialty.  There are more than 126 000 people living in our county and the main hospital does not have an Oncologist!  One day a month an Oncologist flies down from Umeå to answer questions and look over treatment plans... ONE DAY...  But mind you - now it is vacation times in Sweden - and if the average Swede has 5 weeks of payed vacation, I can only imagine how many weeks the doctors get...

Anyway, 2 weeks ago when we met with one of the doctors he informed us that due to vacations there would be no Oncologist at the hospital until the end of August and he recommended for us to go up here to Umeå to attempt to get our questions answered and to figure out the best treatment plan for my Mom.  So, after about 5 hours of driving my Mom and I are now staying at a patient hotel across the street from the hospital.

Time to sleep... Keep your fingers crossed that this trip will give us some encouraging news and serve as an incentive in my Mom's fight!