"My appointment has been cancelled 8 times"

I was referred to a bowel specialist by my urologist as he had some concerns, my first appointment was relatively quick. The doctor was nice. He was very thorough and sent me for a colonoscopy. Since this I have received a letter telling me I needed a barium scan (which took awhile before I got one), in the mean time my appointment to see the doctor again has been cancelled 8 times. When I have spoken to the hospital, I kept getting told my doctor was on annual leave. How can you make appointments if he was going on leave? How many times can one go on annual leave? It doesn’t make sense. I understand that if he is called away on an emergency, that can not be helped, but if you know you are going away, why make these appointments in the first place.

My mother in-law is under the same consultant and her appointment was cancelled 12 times before she got to see him.

My main concern is that I have been told that I may be at a high risk of bowl cancer and time after time my appointment is cancelled and rearranged only to be cancelled again. What happens to myself or other patients that may have something serious wrong with them and knowing this could have easily be dealt with earlier if they kept the appointments in the first place. What procedures are in place for this? Do I have to put up with this and suffer longer than needed before I am seen? It's not fair, something needs to be done. I appreciate that there are a lot of patients needing to be seen to more urgently, but this does need to be looked at to reduce the waiting times.

I have spent all my life going back and forth into hospital for operations and always had good care, I think they do a fantastic job but just of late I feel I have been forgotten by my consultant once I had left the ward.