One woman with ovarian cancer in the US described it as “a lonely journey”, a sentiment echoed by an Australian woman with lung cancer, who described going to her appointments as “horrible”:
“You couldn’t take a support person with you… and to sit there and get that news, that it had doubled in size in the six months since my brain scan before, and I walked out of there and there were so many questions that I asked, but I don’t remember the answer. Like, “When should I have my follow-up scan?” and things like that. Because normally, if you have somebody with you you’ve got two [sets of] ears listening, so when you walk out you kind of go, “Okay, well I need to book this in and do this and do that.” But because it was myself and I was a bit overwhelmed, it’s not very often I go by myself, and so it just reinforced the importance of having someone there. And the consequences of that have been quite dramatic.”
A key recommendation of the paper is for healthcare providers to facilitate remote participation of a support person where they are prevented from attending in person (e.g. set up a separate room with a video connection). As a US-based patient with breast cancer noted:
