Reply to: hospital care (less)

[threaded]

I remember watching a documentary about the treatment of captured British soldiers by the Japanese during WWII. There was a comment one of the old guys came up with that I think fits the modern NHS.

He said something like: "To survive you had to have a mate. If you got sick and you didn't have a mate you were dead: you had no one to look after you. And without a mate to look after you: you didn't get food, you didn't get water, but at least it was quick."

[expat]

They moved her again. Put the call buttons on the head of the bed where she couldn't reach them, then pissed off before she could say so. Back to nurses' station for gossip session. Gran was in the very next bed to nurses' station: called out repeatedly but they were too busy yakking. Eventually shat her bed. This is a respectable old lady who is NOT incontinent. Can you imagine the embarrassment? With it came anger. This also came from her husband when he visited and found her with the curtains closed round the bed. What has happened? Answer: nurses were too busy chatting, patient's cries went unattended, just let her soil the bed. OH also angry, fired off phone calls and emails.

I mean, if they didn't hear her cries, they wouldn't have heard her dying.

Bring back matron.

[BrowneIssue]

When my Dad was in hospital, they could not provide a correct diet for his diabetes. He kept swinging between hyper / hypo so in the end my Mum took all his meals in.

My Mum went in in October to have a lump looked at. They put her in a bed and then day after day it was not convenient to do any tests. She asked to go home but they said "Now you're here you'd better stay until we can do the tests."

They decided to put her on oxygen to save her moving around. (huh?)

If at all possible, do NOT allow your crumblies to be given oxygen 'just in case'. Apparently it causes lung infections.

Oxygen --> lung infection --> pneumonia --> death.

That's how my Mum died. From pneumonia she contracted while in hospital.

Tossers.

And those wards still are not clean.

And she was in a mixed ward when waiting in Surgical and when in Intensive Care.

Sorry, cojak.

Edit: bollocks. That was post 1000.

[cojak]

My Pa's in hospital at the moment....

[threaded]

You used to boast about women, Lamborghinis and travel now you boast about chip shops?

Yes, I have several chip shops in the UK. One of my Plan B's that happened quite by accident. I am quite proud of them.

[_V_]

Don't you lot go knocking hospital food! One of my chip shops, near a hospital, does a roaring trade with visitors coming buying food for the literally starving inmates.

We even sell cut flowers and bags of grapes on market days too!

You used to boast about women, Lamborghinis and travel now you boast about chip shops?

[threaded]

Don't you lot go knocking hospital food! One of my chip shops, near a hospital, does a roaring trade with visitors coming buying food for the literally starving inmates.

We even sell cut flowers and bags of grapes on market days too!

[norrahe]

The good old nhs attitude doesn't just apply to the old.

A friends of mine was diagnosed with chrons disease, it took them 18 months to appoint her with a nutritionist and a dietician and a further 18 months to operate.

Surely the first thing when you are diagnosed with a potentially life threatening ilness that impacts on your dietary needs is to tell you what the hell you can and can't eat and what could cause potenital problems.

[HairyArsedBloke]

<any> hospital.
the ward was staffed by 90% African ladies who really truly didn't give a f..k the few Irish/English/East European nurses there had practically given up on getting them to pull their weight and be conscientious and pro-active.

They were gruff, barely intelligible, let the place get filthy and were quite happy for it to stay like that while they sat on their fat asses.

...

The whole air of apathy and laziness just pervaded the place...truly rotten to the core.

But...I wonder if it's just certain hospitals or wards?

...

If you're going to get ill don't do it in an large inner city area.

Having just had some medical treatment, I can confirm that this is normal.

However, I did get what I paid for.

[expat]

This is so true, 80-85 and then big heart attack in the dead before hitting the ground would be my choice.

Unfortunately that won't be so as in the next 5-10 years I'll be on a list waiting for some poor bugger to die.

Sorry to hear that.

[Gibbon]

my grand uncle is 94 this year. every time i visit him he tells me the same thing: "my dad, when he was old, told me "son, don't get old. it's terrible" and he was right, it is terrible" he then pats me on the knee and mournfully mutters; "don't get old".

This is so true, 80-85 and then big heart attack in the dead before hitting the ground would be my choice.

Unfortunately that won't be so as in the next 5-10 years I'll be on a list waiting for some poor bugger to die.

[expat]

Expat, She is your family. You ought to take her home and care for her there. Just like it used to be done. Old people who could recover at home should not be clogging up hospitals. They take a disproportionate amount of finite resources. You should be taking responsibility instead of complaining. If you or your partner needs to take time off / stop working, that is a sacrifice you should be considering.

We have obviously thought of that. She could not recover at home until she gets the physio. Meantime, my OH and her dad together could not get her to the toilet. My OH wanted to cut her work to 3 days per week but her employer refused, wouldn't even listen to why ("we've all got problems at home"). She will not just quit because she's already scared tulipless that I'll be out of work in 5 weeks. It would need me to take time off work, and that would have us out on the street soon. Incidentally she and her husband live in a bungalow, but we do not. I can't see her in our house, and in her own, she would need care.

Meantime we do have the answer: a short and effective period in hospital. Without this efffing about.

She just needs:
1. decent treatment.
2. take the effing catheter out, lazy bastards, and don't do cold-turkey smoking withdrawal on a sick 85-year-old.
3. give her the physio, then let her go home.

And BTW it is offensive to describe her as "clogging up" the hospital, as if it were a nuisance to have people needing treatment; but I will assume you weren't intending to be personal there.

[Turion]

Expat, She is your family. You ought to take her home and care for her there. Just like it used to be done. Old people who could recover at home should not be clogging up hospitals. They take a disproportionate amount of finite resources. You should be taking responsibility instead of complaining. If you or your partner needs to take time off / stop working, that is a sacrifice you should be considering.

[DS23]

my grand uncle is 94 this year. every time i visit him he tells me the same thing: "my dad, when he was old, told me "son, don't get old. it's terrible" and he was right, it is terrible" he then pats me on the knee and mournfully mutters; "don't get old".

[expat]

When my mother was nursing, some eons ago, if a patient got bedsores, one was up before Matron (think Hattie Jaques with the attitude of Sergeant Hartman) to explain why... and to have a strip torn off you.

Quite how the Sainted Margaret thought that hospitals would be kept anything resembling clean by introducing private companies as cleaners is beyond me.

This country is returning to the bad old days where if you went into hospital you died. From an acquired infection.

"The bad old days" is just what I thought of when I heard about the false teeth (not just our gran but other patients too): patients being dependent on relatives coming in to perform essential functions, very pre-Florence Nightingale.

Unfortunaltely my OH is in full-time work and 2 hours from the hospital; and the patient's husband is himself 88 years old and unwell, so visits every day are not on. And they move her from one ward to another, each with different visiting hours, so you can turn up for one time and find that it should have been another.

And that's another thing: moving her from one ward to another, leaving her stuff behind. Or bringing it in a plastic bag and just leaving it on the floor. Taking her glasses off and just leaving them at the other side of the ward.

It's all painfully, unnecessarily humiliating. I'd rather die; but I'd want to take some with me