I love learning on the job!

Nathan is a health engagement worker who joined the Brighton team in February this year having been carrying out the same role for The Riverside Group in the city for the past 3 years.I recently had the privilege of supporting a client go all the way to London Kings College Hospital from Brighton as he had been diagnosed with liver cancer. He was placed in emergency accommodation in Newhaven and really struggled to engage in health care locally so I didn’t know how this would go. Fortunately Hospital Transport provided us with a taxi there and back with the driver waiting for us to finish and that made it all so much easier than trying to get the train and tube.Like most people alarm bells were going off in my head with the mention of the ‘C’ word but I was pleasantly surprised by the treatment that my client was offered. He has 3 nodules on his liver which are treatable via an incision in the groin (keyhole I imagine) up to the liver where they cut off the blood supply to the nodules and then administer chemotherapy which is designed to stay localised. All this just staying in hospital for two nights. As we know cancer treatment isn’t usually so localised and damages other area and tissues so this was a relief for the patient, especially considering the other stresses in his life such as being without a permanent home. The staff at Kings were very efficient with very little waiting between seeing the different professionals and overall it was a good result from a five hour round trip.