Alexia

Thanks all for your replies. Sorry to hear about your wife @Bobj.

I'm 41 years old. We all have dual nationality and should not have any restrictions for entry to Australia. We're considering Bendigo currently as I have a friend there and there is a spangly new hospital there with a cancer centre. We've never had private health cover. I hadn't considered it an option since my diagnosis.

I moved to Australia in 2007 and then after having 4 children there we decided to return to the UK in 2013. Unfortunately, in 2019 I was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. I have been very lucky to have had a good response to my treatment and I'm still here and stable over 3 years later. However, recently I have begun to wonder if I would get better treatment in Australia than in the UK. The nurses strikes haven't directly affected me yet, but a shortage of staff means that when I have my 3 monthly scans I have to wait 1-2 months for the results. This causes anxiety for me and my family and could mean that if my treatment stopped working I wouldn't know and my cancer could be progressing without me knowing. It feels like this could be be just the beginning and with the increase in cancer diagnosis' expected after covid that there could be further delays in other aspects of my treatment in the future. I remember always having a pretty positive experience of healthcare in Australia although I have no experience of cancer treatment there. So, what I would like to know is if anyone here does have an idea what it is like to be treated for cancer in Australia? What out of pocket expenses might I expect, such as payment for prescriptions and scans.

I had always hoped to go back to Australia once the children had all finished school but I'm feeling more of a pull to go back again and try somewhere new.

We had the same thing. We didn't realise the kids needed passports until maybe 3 weeks before we were due to fly. We applied for passports from Australia. I believe they were processed in NZ. It was a very stressful time as we weren't sure if we'd get them in time but they did, thank goodness. I can't remember now how long it took I'm afraid as it was 2.5 years ago. We changed our flights to give them a little longer to get to us but I think they did actually come in time for our original flight.

We're supposed to be going back on 19th November but I think we'll be changing our flights as we won't have British passports for our kiddiewinks in time. Applied when we had 4 weeks to go and they're meant to take 6 :-( Still, we should at least be back for Xmas :-D