Cancer patient left to live in unheated home

Tracy Gustar has no heating or hot water in her town centre house. She cannot afford to hire a gas engineer to repair a serious leak inside the three-bedroom terraced property.

She has also been unable so far to gain any financial help to pay for the work to be carried out.

She is still receiving a daily nursing visit to tend her wounds. But her serious domestic situation is so dire she faces having to delay a crucial programme of chemotherapy from next Tuesdayafter an operation to remove her bowel.

"I have no idea how ill the chemotherapy is going to make me," she stated on Tuesday. "But there is no way I can go into hospital, make myself ill and come home to live in a house like this.

"I have got to have the chemotherapy, though. To have had my bowel taken out and not have further treatment means that, if there is one cancer cell left, it could grow very quickly again."

Ms Gustar (45), of Merchant Street, has become caught in a unending bureaucratic tangle to uncover her entitlement to any help. She spent three hours on the phone on a recent ring round of different organisations.

The Citizen's Advice Bureau, her GP, social services, Macmillan Cancer Support and the Warmfront national heating group have all become involved. Immediate help which she desperately needs as a single adult homeowner seems unavailable, however.

"I am sure the help is there but I don't know how to get it," she stated.

A spokesman for West Sussex Primary Care Trust, which is providing Ms Gustar's nursing care, said: "We are aware that this patient has applied for a hardship loan from Macmillan Cancer Support. We are waiting for the forms for her application to arrive and have offered to help her fill them in."

Meanwhile, Ms Gustar continues to live in a bedroom of her home heated by an electric radiator at a cost of 10 a day during one of the coldest winters for decades.

Nighttime temperatures in Bognor were below freezing for nine nights running until Sunday. The previous day saw the thermometer reach just half a degree above freezing during daylight.

Ms Gustar said: "The type of cancer I had usually only affects people over 65. What I have been through is just horrendous and my present conditions are making the situation worse. This is 2009 and we are led to believe the NHS will be there for us in our hour of need. That is not the case with me."

Her trail of hardship began two-and-a-half years ago with her mother's death. She moved from Canada Grove to her present home. But divorced Ms Gustar, who has no children, was hit hard by the loss of her mother.

Depression forced her to give up work as a self-employed beautician. She claimed sickness benefit and was just starting to recover when she was devastated to be told late last July she had bowel cancer.

She underwent radio- theraphy before having her bowel removed and a colostomy bag fitted in a major operation on October 20. Her troubles had just begun.

She had to endure a burst pipe which cost 3,000 to repair, paid for by two of her sisters, after it flooded her ground floor.

Next came a gas leak in her house on December 19. The gas company made the situation safe but it is her responsibility to have the damage put right. This is likely to cost some 800 '“ which she cannot afford. She is relying on some 80 a week sickness benefit and having part of her mortgage paid by the state.

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