My father, aged 94, had driven to my house and eaten a meal, and was alert enough to play bridge the night before he went into hospital with pneumonia which they cured, but unfortunately got clostridium difficile. (I later learned you can be given treatment for pneumonia, basically taking pills, at home, with a doctor or nurse calling daily to monitor you.)
My father in an NHS hospital complained his dentures were not cleaned. He got thrush in the mouth. It was too painful for him to eat or drink.
I was told the thrush in his feet would be treated when he got home, despite the foot specialist being same corridor. He never got home. He got thrush in the feet and could not walk.
I asked for food supplements. We read the label. He had been given drinks filled with sugar. He was diabetic.
He got clostridium difficile.
He wasn't eating for a couple of days. He was so depressed he told the doctor he wanted to die. I'm not surprised. If I miss only one meal I feel depressed. How would you feel with no food or drink, alone, in a bed looking at a blank wall all day. (I had a cold for four days and didn't want to take my germs into hospital. Sent other relatives in the evening. tried phoning hospital.) Like other people (in Today's Mail comments on an article on the NHS hospitals) I ordered a TV but neither I, the bedridden patient, nor any of the hospital staff knew how to turn it on.
I tried to transfer him home, spent all day phoning social services. The hospital claimed they kept calling social services. Social services told me they'd never been told the case was urgent. The hospital was in one district, but social services was in another.
I went to hospital. He was so dehydrated, his tongue was swollen so he couldn't speak. Or swallow water. No point being in hospital. Not being fed. He can't walk to a taxi. What to do?
I asked for the hospital's weekend on duty doctor. I wanted a drip.
She refused to come - because he was under the care of a consultant so she claimed she could not over-ride the consultant's instructions.
Time is of the essence. My father died.
A solicitor who'd done wills told me a quick way to get out of hospital in an ambulance is transfer to a private hospital which sends an ambulance.
There, we'd have a bedside phone. Once before my father had been in a private hospital. We learned that you could phone the consultant from your hospital bed You don't even need to know the number. The hospital switchboard has the numbers of consultants.
Going to a private hospital would have been worth the cost, as inheritance tax, lawyers and probate take so much, I'd rather have had my father's money spent on my father. He'd saved all his life for 'a rainy day' and the 'rainy day' had arrived. There my wishes would have been more of a priority. My father would have had a phone. And I could have had an ambulance to take him home to die, which he'd have preferred.
The hospital nurse did his best. he phoned the on duty doctor a second time. No luck.
I phoned family urgently. My father could not say anything. Because of the dehydration his tongue was too swollen. He could not even say goodbye to me.
He just died. Now he was dead, I had four nurses, everybody, come to have a look.
I was shown to another side room. I went out to the corridor to ask for a cup of tea.
One of the kindly male nurses I knew from previous visits was coming down the corridor. He smiled and asked, 'How's your father?"
I said, 'Dead.'
The hospital's weekend on duty hospital doctor came along after my father died. The doctor was obliged to sign the death certificate. A cynic pointed out that also the doctor is paid to sign the death certificate!
