I am interested in learning how others have been treated with various blood cancers. Were you treated at your local hospital (which may have advantages in terms of geography and perhaps speed of access when treatment needs to be done quickly) or at a specialist hospital where you have access to the expert doctors who have worked on clinical trials and seen lots of people with your specific type of blood cancer. As a patient how do you feel about seeing a local more general haematologist versus getting referred to someone who is an expert in your specific type of blood cancer? Have you found any barriers to being referred for a specialist second opinion if that is what you wanted? Has COVID19 made any difference to any of this?
I know that in CLL many patients want to be treated by an expert centre especially when watch and wait comes to an end and some of us have found some local haematologists can be reluctant to facilitate this. When that happens some of us have just asked our GP to refer us on. If anyone is willing to share their experiences and opinions on this I would be very interested as it is a topic close to my heart and I would like to get a feeling of how people with other types of blood cancer experience this.