NHS Disgrace

Well, having spent a reasonable amount of time being muted through the hospital system over the past few weeks, I'm scared for the future. My unilateral oophorectomy identified cancer, and with all the publicity surrounding raising awareness with fund raising events and help lines advertised, it would seem the Government supports helping people like me - wrong!

For all the good work, there is not enough research taking place, new news? No

For all the good work, patients, cancer sufferers or otherwise, get a better service now? No

For all the good work, we have a choice about our treatment? No

For all the good work, we have a voice as an inpatient? No

A hospital, the clean, safe place, where you feel like the panic from pain and suffering will be dealt with is a total fallacy, the ward I was on saw 3 different grades of staff, nurse, just one who is fully qualified, student nurse, one or two, and a health care assistant. Their role was purely to provide a concoction of medication to shut you up, and in my experience if you know something is really wrong, they pump you with more drugs until eventually you disolved into a pool of frustration at not being heard.

 The timetable, dish out medication, qualified nurse, these varied dramatically, Teresa, wow knew her stuff much more old skool. Stacey, what can I do today to get out of doing anything else at all. I saw seven different qualified nurses in my time there 3 of the 7 I wouldn't let take my dog for a walk.

Then doctors rounds, this is an interesting phenomonen, and the practice itself hasn't changed since I was a child, except for the fact that when things were delegated to nurses, the requests were not actually carried out and the doctor never checked the next day to see if it had been. A doctor took off my dressing and asked the nurse to replace it, she said it would be done straight away, it never happened, when I reminded the elusive Stacey she said she was too busy, when the doctor asked why my catheter was still in three days post op, a fumbled response wasn't even listened to, it did however take six hours after the nurse was told to deal with it, and only because I was constantly on the case.

The scariest thing for me was rolling around in pain and ringing for help, to have my buzzer turned off because I'd had my quota of painkillers, I was making a fuss about nothing and it was just post op wind, they had more important things to do, I asked to see a doctor and I was refused, is not the term a national health SERVICE so where was my service. I am now laid up in bed after a horrific week post discharge with a pelvic infection, the source of my pain, thanks for that!

The treatment by one particular nurse has left me feeling as if I never want to go back to hospital ever again, and have managed to avoid it this week despite an out of hours doctor trying to bundle me into an ambulance a few days ago. Praise my GP for knowing his onions.

After being told to get over the pain and deal with it, the student nurse from hell came to help me walk to the toilet, she sat the head of the bed up so quickly and so straight I was left bundled in a heap barely able to straighten, it may have helped if she had warned me first. I reached out to a chair to help me off of the bed, she moved the chair out of my reach, this had to be the ultimate revenge for calling a nurse to help me with the pain and she had the job of coming to see me.

There is so much more but some will be the basis for a formal complaint.

The story of the ward running will follow later, and the horrors I saw, they want to be thankful I wasn't undercover for Panorama, the PM needs to wake up and smell the coffee, whatever he thinks is in place doesn't actually work!