We need to talk about the two-tier treatment that is ruining our NHS for thousands

OPINION

All week on 5’s Vanessa, we’ve been running VHS or the Vanessa Health Service. There are no prizes for guessing why. Three quarters of a million women are on waiting lists enduring pain, humiliation, professional paralysis and interminable delay while what used to be called their ‘women problem’ rage untreated.

Our phone lines were inundated as women experiencing everything from breast-feeding problems, cancer and incontinence took advantage of a rare opportunity to speak to a doctor.

We’ve known for far too long our two-tiered NHS doles out a substandard service to women at every age and stage. Hit puberty and girls are subjected – sometimes by female doctors – to high-handed dismissal of agonising and acute symptoms which (and I am choosing my words carefully) means subjecting them to a sentence of years of unremitting torture.

Explaining clearly you are wracked with unbearable pain every month: you vomit, you faint, you can’t sleep, eat or work evokes the patronising: “There, there… this happens to all women. Try a hot water bottle and a couple of Paracetamol.”

Endometriosis, a condition that causes disabling pain, still takes as long as eight years to diagnose. Imagine those eight years. The sufferer is simply left to writhe in agony. Over the counter painkillers don’t touch the sides.

Women, particularly those from ethnic minority backgrounds, are all too often condemned to prolonged and excruciating labours as the ideology favouring ‘natural’ childbirth takes precedence over common sense and compassion. Postpartum, women still face the ultimate cruelty as their post-natal depression goes undiagnosed, breastfeeding is championed regardless of their milk supply and incontinence and prolapse wombs are dismissed as “just part of life”.

Communication is still so poor that, when I had a mammogram live on TV to show 50-plus women invited to have this life-saving breast examination every three years once they reach the age of 50 that it doesn’t hurt, isn’t scary and at worst pinches a little, uptake increased dramatically and DMs flowed in from ladies saying: “Now I’ve seen you having yours, I’ll say yes to mine.”

The NHS shouldn’t need celebrities to make something so important crystal clear. Reams have been written about poor treatment of menopause. Women are told to grin and bear the, often, debilitating symptoms. Fertility problems are shunted aside.

Incontinence is left untreated. Loss of libido is ignored. Would men stand for this? I think you know the answer.

Katie Piper is so formidable a life-force, the words ‘acid burns victim’ now feature way down her remarkable CV. Her memoir, Still Beautiful, hits the shelves next month. Katie’s unique take on what it means to be beautiful is as forthright and challengingly unexpected as Piper herself. I have met Katie in various contexts and been dazzled by her original perspective, hilarious turn of phrase, courage, determination, honesty and, yes, her beauty too.

She is candid about her place in the nation’s hearts: “For the public I’m burnt but not too burnt. I know there are people considered too burnt to be in a beauty campaign or on television. I was white, blonde and middle-class when it happened to me. I am the kind of victim the public believes. Others have a different experience.”

Second on a Most Empowering Women of the past 25 years list alongside Michelle Obama, Katie is a national treasure. Watch her soar.

MY grandpa Mo died in 1963. He was 48 and I was one. In his box of precious albums, I discovered Guys and Dolls and the magnificent Connie Francis sings Yiddish Favourites. Connie is Italian, not Jewish, but her richly variegated voice vividly evokes the soul of the shtetl.

Astoundingly at the age of 87 Connie is back in the charts with the irresistibly hummable 1962 song Pretty Little Baby. By some miracle Instagrammers discovered the track and within hours it was trending all over the globe. Connie is understandably ecstatic. After 40 years in chart exile she’s a hit, she’s pick of the pops. I only wish I could tell my Grandpa Mo.

We're a nation of dog lovers so, for heaven’s sake, can we please stop being so sniffy and judgemental about the besotted folk who call their canines ‘fur babies’.

We all know dogs are pack animals. We know they aren’t ‘supposed’ to be carted about in channel bags, dressed in designer zoot-suits and fed Fortnum’s macaroons by hand. Can’t we just keep our feelings to ourselves and relax.

The birth rate has fallen consistently since 2010. We’re averaging a paltry 1.44 children per woman, the lowest level on record. We’re put off procreating by inaccessible housing, the cost of living crisis, job insecurity, precarious relationships and lack of faith in the future. Dogs are salve to our souls. Academics found “an increasing number of owners have come to regard their dogs as their children”. As relationship expert Mel Robbins would say: “Let them!” Stop this dog superiority nonsense.

Love is love wherever you find it. Just shut up.

I received a gold-embossed invitation from Simon Cowell to one of the five Britain’s Got Talent semi finals and schlepped along the three eldest grandbabies. What a riot! You haven’t heard a deafening din till you’ve survived a 1,000 roaring enthusiasts yelling “press the gold” or whatever the heck they were bawling in maximum-decibel unison.

Showbiz insiders think the show could carry on for decades and I can testify they are spot on. BGT has every audience winning ingredient: judges to love or loathe, acts to enjoy or despise, under-dogs, Ant & Dec, music, fireworks, confetti-canon, and the whole thing is wrapped in humour and at heart both gentle and profoundly tongue in cheek. Did I know my life lacked a fellow playing tunes using rubber chickens? I didn’t before BGT but, believe me, I’m in no doubt whatsoever now.

Chelsea Flower Show is a feast for the horticulturally entranced, but it is weirdly split in two. The expensive show gardens are pale and ethereal, inspired by hedgerows and arid desert spaces. The colour palette is muted. Nothing brighter than a dull dusky purple is allowed space. Green, white, mauve and tiny filaments of cream prevail.

Inside the show tents, orange, pink, scarlet, crimson, vermilion, peach, turquoise and firework hues of vivid vivacity explode with scent and vigour. Outside designers favour pallid understatement. Inside, growers reflect the rainbow brightness real gardeners love. I can’t wait for the day a professional Chelsea garden designer grasps the nettle/creative chance and fills the space with dahlias, fuchsias, peonies, roses, gladioli, geraniums in the bright jewels colours we crave.