In the first exclusive extract from the Ukip leader’s book, The Purple Revolution, Farage reveals how the NHS nearly killed him – and then saved his life
It was Boxing Day 1986. I had been at work in the City because Wall Street was open. I traded until New York closed, then raced back to Kent, determined to make last orders.
I walked into the Queen’s Head and ordered a pint. All of a sudden, an indescribable pain shot through my left-hand side. It seemed to go from somewhere near my left kidney, through my abdomen and into my groin. I was in absolute agony. But I tried to grin and bear it and ordered another pint.
Two days went past and I was still in real pain, at which point I realised that something was very badly wrong. On Dec 28, I went to the Accident & Emergency Department in Bromley. Several doctors examined me – registrars, locums, all that lot – and they came to the conclusion that I had a twisted testicle.
I would need an immediate operation, they said. I was taken by ambulance to hospital in Farnborough, Hants, where I was re-examined by another four doctors. It was pretty painful.
An Indian doctor told me that the Bromley doctors had got it all wrong: I had an infection. I was to go home and take a heavy dose of antibiotics. I did not need an operation after all. A few weeks went by and the pain was just as bad. All the time, my left testicle was getting markedly larger.
After six weeks, I went to see my GP in Biggin Hill. By this time, I was having difficulty walking. My left testicle was as large as a lemon and rock hard. The GP arranged for me to see a consultant that day. To say that this consultant was disinterested would be an understatement; perhaps he had a round of golf booked for the afternoon. ”Keep taking the antibiotics,” he preached, and that was that.
I was in a terrible state by now. I phoned the office and spoke to one of my bosses. He told me that I was covered with private medical insurance and that I should use it. The next day I saw a private GP, Dr Solomon, in the City.
He told me I must have a scan. I had been alarmed by the swiftness of my own GP’s referral to a consultant but, after that, no medical professional had taken me seriously. Until now. Dr Solomon made an immediate appointment for me to see a top surgeon called Jerry Gilmore in Harley Street.
Clare, my then girlfriend and a nurse herself – she would later become my wife – was with me. We were both extremely worried. I had the scan, and the radiographer handed me the results. I did not like the look on his face at all. ”You’re going to see Mr Gilmore now, aren’t you?” he said. ”You’re going straight there, aren’t you, not stopping at the pub on the way, are you?”
Bloody hell. I went to see Gilmore. He examined me and looked at the scan. Very quickly he came to the conclusion that I had a tumour and they were going to have to remove the testicle. I was not happy about this at all. It doesn’t matter how much people tell you that you have a surplus with two, I certainly didn’t want one of them removed.
On the day of the operation, Clare and I took the train from Kent into London, then got a cab. As soon as we arrived at the hospital, I was asked to sign a consent form. The two of us were scared. I tried to make a joke and asked them to make sure they got the correct testicle. But it was all horrendous.
They shaved me and drew a big cross on the area that was soon to be no more. As I came round, the anaesthetist entered the room and I knew from his face that everything was far from all right. He stared down at me and said: “They can do marvellous things these days.” With that, he turned around and walked out. Surreal.
Gilmore then entered the room. He told me I had cancer, and that it was almost inconceivable that I would not have secondary tumours in my stomach and lungs. I was terrified. It makes me upset even now – 30-odd years later – to think about it. There I was, 21 years old, being told that I was almost certainly riddled with cancerous tumours.
It was astonishing. For the best part of two months I had been fobbed off by one NHS doctor to the next – apart from my own GP, all the rest thought I had nothing more serious than a common cold. All they had had to do that first night in A&E was to have me referred for a scan. I remember feeling the most profound sense of fury, that my cancer was just so unfair.
For two and a half days, I just thought: ”This is going to be it.” I had so much I wanted to do, so much I was sure in my mind I was going to achieve. And I was in love with Clare.
That fury was so overwhelming. I don’t know whether every cancer sufferer feels the same way, whether you are 21, 41 or 82. But I certainly did. The effect on my family was astonishing. It is only now, at the age of 50 and as a father of four (two sons and two daughters), that I realise how my own parents must have felt. Years later a friend told me – and I agree – that my diagnosis was worse for my parents than for me.
After the seemingly endless two and a half days of tests and scans that followed, I was due to return for the results. The oncologist came to my room. This time it was my turn to shock the doctors. I had a fag going, Channel 4 Racing on the telly and a few bets on the go. This man – Peter Harper – looked at me with a mixture of wonderment and disbelief.
He told me that, despite the odds, the cancer in my testicle had not spread. After an experience like this, he remarked, some people spend the rest of their life on carrot juice; some go the other way. Eyeing me knowingly, with the racing on in the background and a full ashtray on my bedside table, Harper said that he suspected that I would fall into the latter category.
Because I was so young, Harper said that he was loath to commit me to a course of chemotherapy because it would have made me sterile. Instead, he said that the course of action would be much more cruel. I was to be given what felt like a six-month sentence.
Twice a week I was to go to the private London Bridge Hospital and have blood tests. If, in any one of those tests, the protein count went up, I was to be rushed into a course of chemotherapy. After the tests twice a week, they became once a month, then every six months. But they didn’t get any easier. I hated them. There wasn’t a morning of one of those visits when I didn’t wonder whether I should be packing a toothbrush.
The cancer – and I am scared of tempting fate – has, to date, not come back. I’m not sure how it fully affected me, but it has left me with a clear belief that without private health care I would probably be dead. I just do not understand that, for want of a scan, I might not be here now. How could so many doctors have come to the conclusion that a scan was not cheaper in the medium to long term than being in hospital for three or four days?
For sure, I had cancer 30 years ago, but I have strong views that what I experienced of the NHS then is still the case now. I left London Bridge Hospital with a clear view that the NHS is so over-stretched that if you can afford private health care, you should take it, particularly for diagnostics and preventative medicine.
In the NHS, the system is so battered and poorly run that unless you are really lucky, you will fall through the cracks. The NHS is, however, astonishingly good at critical care. But what testicular cancer taught me is that the NHS will probably let you down if you need screening, fast diagnosis and an operation at a time that suits you.
I know how sacred the NHS is to the people of Britain; everyone is frightened that it will be taken away. But the cost of that fear is that the political classes are terrified of even criticising it. The standard of debate about the NHS on programmes such as Question Time is risible. No one – whether Tory, Labour or Liberal Democrat – will have anything but praise for the doctors and nurses of the NHS.
Then they get a round of applause and that is it. It is as if you cannot support something and criticise it at the same time. I have now had three near-death experiences – cancer, an accident and a plane crash – and I’ve seen the best and worst of the NHS. I am better qualified to criticise and defend our health care system than most politicians.
The real elephant in the room is the effect on the NHS of an expanding population in Britain. No one from any of the main three parties will talk about how it has become so over-stretched because of the massive increase in the number of people arriving at our shores.
Immigration has an impact and it is foolish to pretend that it doesn’t. At the same time, our management of conditions such as stroke, heart disease and cancer is behind France. With our increasing and ageing population, the NHS budget is never going to come down. But, good grief, it could be much better run.
I cannot help taking the view that the NHS was better run in the Sixties, where the state controlled it outright and we had matrons running the wards. It was Labour’s vision to build bright, shiny new hospitals, delivered through private finance initiatives. We certainly got them. The trouble was that the £50?billion cost of building them has ballooned to a disastrous £300?billion overhang.
None of this is ever discussed by the political classes – there is no debate or criticism countenanced. There are huge problems with the NHS, deep structural ones, but, as I have said, I know more than most what that means on a personal level.
When I had cancer, the incompetence and negligence of the NHS almost killed me, but it has also saved my life. I am certainly not taking any flak from gutless politicians who claim that I am no fan or supporter of the NHS.