Not Normal Service

Morning Coffee    by Mary Bradish Titcomb 1858-1927

Mum was rushed into hospital once again, in the early hours of Sunday morning this time with breathing difficulties.  We were literally ten minutes away from visiting her at her care home on Sunday morning, at the more respectable time of 10am, luckily we were still on the motorway when my brother phoned to say that a voicemail message had just come through on his phone, it had been left in the middle of the night but he has his phone off then.  My phone is always on, but for some reason this time they didn't call me. 😕

Anyway a quick re-programme of the Satnav and we were headed for the hospital where after a lot of chasing round departments and wards, as she had only just left the A&E department, we finally found Mum looking very frail and very confused.

We are quite confused too, as there is nothing they can do for her except make her comfortable and give her oxygen, something they could very easily have done at her care home, especially since she has instructions on her paperwork not to send her to hospital except in a real health emergency.  Which happened a few weeks ago when she had yet another bowel blockage.  They are a nursing and hospice type care home as well as residential, so they have a lot of very qualified staff.  

We were most concerned that the hospital seemed to know nothing about her.  Luckily we arrived just as the cutlery was being delivered to the beds ready for lunch, she was about to be given a 'normal meal', something she cannot eat now as she is on a NHS Level Four diet.  They also didn't realise that she is completely bedbound, doubly incontinent and has dementia, so is unreliable to ask any medical questions of, hence them being told by her that yes she can have any sort of food.

I had a good chat with her nurse and then we had to come away as you can't visit during lunch time.  You wouldn't think that this was that stressful really, well I wouldn't have years ago, but when it's been going on in one form or another for over two and half years on a very regular basis it's starting to have a real build up effect.

I sent an email to the care home when I got home, not complaining as such but asking why I wasn't phoned this time, and also suggesting they had some sort of Patient Passport type document, just a photocopy from their file, that could travel to hospital with residents when necessary to give the nursing staff at least a head start.  It would save a lot of stress.  It turns out they have this in place already, although the system keeps letting them down and the document goes missing somewhere between the paramedics and the A&E staff and then never makes it to the ward.  They are now going to be raising this matter urgently.

I needed to get all this down in writing so that I have it for future reference, and my blog seemed as good a place as any. 

Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.  😄

Sue xx