Hope For Tomorrow - ‘A Brilliant Well Executed Concept’

This article first appeared in Issue No.2 November 2024 of 'The Journey' an online newsletter publisged ny the cancer charity "Hope for Tomorrow" that runs mobile cancer treatment units in the UK. 'Hope for Tomorrow' helps the NHS to bring cancer services closer to patients with our mobile cancer care units, making their lives that much easier at a difficult time.

Linda puts a smile on your face. But it’s not just? her looks that turns heads, but the welcome you get when you step inside.

I’m boarding Linda, one of two gleaming white and immaculately presented mobile cancer units assigned to Airedale NHS Foundation Trust in Steeton, West Yorkshire by the charity ‘Hope for Tomorrow’ to receive weekly? treatment for my Stage 4 prostate cancer.

The other larger unit Christine is currently based at Airedale General Hospital in Steeton. She serves as an overspill for the Hamemolotogy and Oncology Day Unit (HODU) at Airedale Hospital which can receive up to a 100 patients a day.

Unfortunately for me my cancer diagnosis is terminal, but the lack of foreboding I feel about stepping inside Linda, based at Morrisons supermarket in Skipton, North Yorkshire, helps ease any concerns and worries that I have about my palliative treatment.

The fact that Linda is just one stop from the rail station in my home village of Cononley on the edge of Yorkshire Dales National Park is a big plus. It is barely a five minute walk from Skipton rail station.

I can park too for free is also a? great bonus as I have a few mobility issues from a stroke I had five years ago, and I can combine a shopping trip to Morrisons before or after receiving treatment on Linda.

When you step inside Christine or Linda you are greeted with a warm smile from the Airedale Hospital’s clinical staff who put you at ease. Being greeted by your first name and offered a place to sit and hang your coat all helps calm any nerves you have.

The Airedale Hospital staff rotate between HODU and the ‘Hope for Tomorrow’ units. So as a patient you are receiving exactly the same excellent care as you do on HODU.

It’s just the atmosphere in the mobile units, with just four or six seats inside which makes it all the more a calming and relaxed experience.

My terminal diagnosis, following an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), CT (computed tomography) and bone scans to determine the spread of my cancer was for me the day the earth stood still.

The cancer had spread from my prostate to my lower spin, hips, chest cavity and lymph nodes. Thus it’s inoperable.

Shocking though the diagnosis was for me, and especially my wife Caroline and my sons, my treatment on the ‘Hope for Tomorrow’ units has been a source of comfort and reassurance at the time of great stress for our family.

Indeed, by the time you read this my chemotherapy treatment will have been completed. I will genuinely miss the friendships I have made with the fellow patients I have met on Christine and Linda.

We have formed a unique bond which only those of us who have gone through the rigors of cancer treatment can understand. It’s like our secret club.

You are never ‘cured’ of cancer, a disease which affects one out of two people in the UK, but at least with ‘Hope for Tomorrow’ and the NHS we can be assured that we are receiving the very best of care to ensure this dreadful disease is kept in remission.

Even for patients like me, it’s? comforting to know that a fine charity like ‘Hope for Tomorrow’ exists to bring care to the community, rather than the community having to come to it. Especially important in a rural environment such as mine on the edge of The Yorkshire Dales National Park where public transport can be at best a bit hit and miss.

The Hope For Tomorrow is such a brilliant well executed concept that you wonder why the idea has not been adopted by GP surgery groups in rural areas to bring care directly to the communities they serve, especially for those? who do not have access to a car. Primary care groups take note!

Robert Minton-Taylor learned in May 2024 that he has six years to live after learning his prostate cancer had spread to his hips, spine, chest cavity and lymph nodes. The 76-year old journalist turned public relations practitioner who lives in Cononley, near Keighley, West Yorkshire, is a visiting fellow of Leeds Beckett University. He also serves on the Professional Standards Panel of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and is a stroke advisor to the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts and is a public governor at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust.