"Care during the end of my mum's life"

My mum passed away last year having been diagnosed in 2 months earlier with neuroendocrine cancer. 

She'd spent 10 days in hospital following complications with a catheter, but with no hospice spaces available decided to be discharged home with additional support from Marie Curie carers, the district nursing team and her GP service as well as the at home palliative care staff. 

She came home on the Monday and was in good spirits but deteriorated rapidly and was in severe pain by Wednesday which could no longer be controlled by oral medication. The district nurse advised Thursday morning that it would be necessary to start mum on a driver to remove the need for injections every couple of hours, and  contacted the GP surgery to arrange for the medication (that had been advised on the hospital discharge paper work) to be prescribed.

My understanding from the pharmacy is that the first prescription issued didn't contain any dosage instructions and so was returned to the surgery Thursday morning as they were unable to fulfil it without this information. The GP surgery reissued the same prescription early afternoon, without correction, but informed us (via the district nurses) that the medication would be available to collect shortly. My brother left work early to collect the prescription as I was unable to leave mum. On arriving at the pharmacy he was told they were still unable to fulfil the prescription due to the same error. 

At this point, the district nurses had been in contact with the GPs surgery for most of the day chasing to get this sorted. They advised that I should also start chasing as mum needed this medication before the end of the day. I phoned the surgery and sat on hold in a queue for 45 minutes. During this time I also contacted the palliative care team to see if they were able to get though to the surgery any more quickly, which they attempted for me. 

Once I eventually got through to a receptionist, I was told that an electronic message had been sent to the GP on call to fix the prescription and that she would get to it as soon as possible. I felt this wasn't enough and that more should be being done, and refused to leave the call until someone had had a response from the GP as at this stage it was nearly 5pm and the district nurse should have been finishing her shift. 

I was then passed to another receptionist who advised me that I should hang up as I was preventing emergency calls from getting though. I admit that at this point, with my mum in a huge amount of pain and me being unable to get the thing that would help her feel more comfortable, I lost my cool and the call was ended.

Shortly afterwards a text was received on my mum's phone from the GP to say that the prescription had been fixed and was with the pharmacy and that they were sorry for the confusion.

Fortunately the brilliant district nurse who had supported us throughout the day stayed late and was able to set up mum's driver once my brother had been to the pharmacy for the medication.

Once mum was on the driver she was clearly in less pain, but she never rallied and sadly passed away a few days later. 

Rather than spending a last few hours with my mum talking to her while she was able to and comforting her, I spent them fighting against a disorganised and unsympathetic GP surgery and I feel a huge amount of guilt over this. Whilst I know it was the right thing to be doing to enable mum to have the best care possible, I feel it shouldn't have been necessary for me to choose. I feel hugely let down by the GP surgery who are clearly overstretched (both medical and admin staff) and did not have the capacity to support a terminally ill patient in the community.