Referred in February, appointment in November. Is nine months normal for pelvic health physio?

Letter came this morning. Referred on the 11th of February, first appointment on the 26th of November. That is nine and a half months of my life and I have spent most of it assuming the referral had been lost, because I rang twice and both times got told "you are on the list" in a tone that suggested I should be grateful.

What I want to know is whether that is a normal wait or whether something has gone wrong that I could have fixed in March. Nobody at any point has told me how long I should expect. The GP said "it can be a bit of a wait", which covers everything from six weeks to never. And I have no idea whether the list I am on is even the right list.

Symptoms have got worse since February, not dramatically, but enough that I have changed what I do at work. Is nine months just what this is now?

Mine was seven months and I thought I was the unlucky one. Sounds like we are both just ordinary.

Different route to yours, mine came through urology after surgery, but the same lesson so I will put it in anyway.

I waited five months and when I finally sat down in front of somebody it turned out I had been on the general physiotherapy list at the hospital, not the pelvic health one. Nobody did that on purpose. The referral letter said physiotherapy and it got sorted into physiotherapy, and the person who eventually saw me said it happens more than you would think. She got me moved but the five months were gone.

So my one piece of advice is ring and ask them to tell you the actual name of the list, not "the physio list". If the person on the phone cannot say the words pelvic health, that is your answer.

I want to answer this honestly rather than kindly, because the kind version is useless.

Nobody can tell you whether nine months is normal, and the reason is that no health system publishes a waiting time for pelvic health physiotherapy. Not England, not Ireland, not Australia, not Canada. I went looking for that number properly when I wrote the waiting times piece and came back with an absence, which was not the article I set out to write.

Two things about the English data in particular, because it is the number people get handed. The monthly community services collection publishes banded counts only, so many people waiting under a week, so many over eighteen weeks, and so on. It publishes no median. Every "average community physiotherapy wait" you have ever read was worked out by whoever published it, not by the people who collect the figures. And pelvic health is not a service line in that collection at all. Neither is women's health, nor perinatal pelvic health, nor continence physiotherapy. So when a figure is quoted at you it is almost always the adult musculoskeletal one, and if you are on a pelvic health list you are not standing in that queue. The professional network for this field, POGP, publishes no waiting survey either, and the big waiting numbers you see from the RCOG are gynaecology referral to treatment, which is a different thing again.

Which is a long way of saying that Gerry's question is the one that matters, and it is the only one anyone can actually answer for you: which list am I on, spelled out in full. Ask it by phone this week rather than turning up on the 26th and finding out.

The second thing I would check is whether you had to be referred at all. Self referral exists in some places and not others, it is usually restricted to pregnancy and the first year after birth, and several people on this board were told a GP referral was their only option in a system that did allow them to refer themselves. Getting referred sets out the routes system by system and what to say so the referral is not bounced back.

What I cannot tell you is whether nine months is safe for your particular symptoms, because I am a teacher who kept a notebook and I have never assessed anybody. Symptoms that have changed since February are a reason to go back to whoever referred you and say so, in those words, before November.

Reading this two months late but the "which list" thing has just saved me. Rang, asked, was on the wrong one since October. Thank you.

Update for the record. I rang, asked for the name of the list, and it was the right one, which was a relief and also a bit deflating because I had built up a whole story where somebody had lost my letter.

Went on the 26th. First appointment lasted fifty minutes, longer than any medical appointment I have had in years, and I came out with things written down and a review booked for eight weeks. I also took a three day bladder diary in with me because somebody on this board said to, and she went through it line by line and said it changed what she would have guessed from the history alone.

Nine months was still nine months. But I would rather have known in March that the wait was real and not a mistake, so if you are sitting where I was, ring.