I READ with interest Zoe Dixon's article about her mother Pam Smith's cancer treatment at York Hospital, Was that the best they could do?' (May 23).

I can understand that Zoe might want to put the question to those who treated her mother, especially in today's current climate of financial constraints.

However, it does seem that the NHS team gave her mother a further three-and-a-half years of life with their care (having originally been told she would live only nine weeks).

Having questioned Hugh Bayley and Dr Jackson, she concludes in the last sentence of the article: "I feel satisfied that the cancer unit in York did its very best for my mum."

How different the slant on the article would have been had that phrase been the headline!

Working in the health service, I come across many instances where patients are diagnosed with cancers and it is my experience that right from the initial diagnosis to the treatments, ongoing care and aftercare services, we could not want for a better service than that which is provided by a very dedicated team at York Hospital.

Finance is a problem and always will be and, as long as this fine team continues to find more and more ways of treating these cancers, more and more people will require its help.

The pot is not bottomless. It's time we thanked our NHS more openly instead of intimating that it is the workers' fault that there is insufficient money to treat everybody for every ailment.

Judy Sutton, Forest Way, York.