Dr Robin Dawson recently treated my father for bowel cancer. My father was diagnosed on the 31st of March 2020. He had the operation to remove the tumour in July,which I thought was great given the current circumstances. A day after the operation Dr Dawson told my father with my mother present "great news, I have got it all you will be o.k. to go home in a day or two"During the next three weeks my father continued to have abdominal pains and was in touch with Dr Dawson repeatedly.Dr Dawson's reply was always the same "It is normal to have these pains after an operation such as this" My father would not accept this and eventually after 4 weeks he was invited for a scan.Having had the scan Dr Dawson said "I am going on my holidays ,but I will make sure that another doctor looks at your results." After not hearing anything for a week after the scan, my father started telephoning the hospital every day for his results and the answer was no nothing every time . This went on for five weeks. My father then went to his local G.P. for something minor and mentioned that he had had no results from his scan.The G.P. then found the scan results on his computer and told him to go to the hospital straight away. When he went to the hospital another Dr looked at his scan and told him he had severe constipation.Then a day later they told him the cancer was back. One more day later they decided to fit a colostomy bag.When they tried to fit this they could not get through because my father's abdomen was so full of cancer tumours.He sadly died in the Douglas Macmillan hospice a week later.My point is ,I think my fathers scan was overlooked because Dr Dawson went on holiday and nobody else looked at it. Had they done so I may have had a number of years with my beautiful father.

Submitted Nov. 21, 2020