She found out she had cancer from a stranger on the phone. She just wants a family doctor – CBC

Doctors and patients share ideas about solving Canada’s health-care crisis

Feb 07, 2023

When Tanya Sunshine found a lump in her breast last spring, she lined up for five hours at an urgent care clinic in Langford, B.C., to see a doctor.

The doctor examined her and sent her for tests. When the results came back, Sunshine was told she had breast cancer over the phone, by a different doctor she hadn’t met.

“The doctor felt horrible, she was almost crying with me — and I was alone,” Sunshine told Matt Galloway at a public forum on health care, hosted by The Current in Victoria, B.C. on Monday.

“But then I did get another call the next day from a different doctor at the same place, and he didn’t even know why he was calling me,” she said.

Sunshine asked if the doctor was calling with more test results, which jogged his memory.

“Then he just said, ‘This is bad. This is very, very bad. And you have a long road ahead of you,'” she said.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/health-care-forum-the-current-1.6739646