"My mum's hip replacement"

Three years ago my mum had a hip replacement and for two and a half, nearly three years she has been in excruciating pain. She had been going back and forth to the doctors in that time. They said that is was not her hip that was the problem but her knee and she had a knee replacement a couple of years back.

They kept saying it was her knee that was the problem and I this point I got involved. We went to see the consultant who performed the replacement and my mum has some X-rays done. When we went back we say a consultant under the one who did the initial hip replacement. He said that nothing was wrong with the hip but that it could be the tissue around it that was causing the pain. My Mum had had injections that took the pain away so he said this showed it was her tissue that was the problem and he arranged for her t have a proceed to fix this.

When the appointment came through it was for a date three months away so I rang the consultants secretary and asked if it could be brought forward as my mother had been in pain for a long time now. We got a new date to see Mr Blair for a pre-assessment but when we went for the appointment it was the same consultant as before. This was confusing as we were expecting Mr Blair. This consultant said he knew nothing about Mr Blair bringing the appointment forward and that Mr Blair was in a clinic. We asked to see Mr Blair and waited outside for him.

When we met him her examined my mum then went out of the room to look at her x-rays whilst she got ready. He can back and said he could see what the problem was from the x-ray; the hip was lose. I asked why he noticed and not the other consultant he said that it took a ‘trained eye’ which made me think that if it took at trained eye maybe the other consultant shouldn’t be in that job.

He said they would get my mum in as soon as possible to have this fixed but it was still another three months before her operation date. She went in to hospital at the end on March to have her hip replacement replaced. They let her out on the Wednesday and in the early hours of Thursday morning she got out of bed to go to the toilet and her hip dislocated. She fell to the floor and couldn’t get up or notify anyone. She stayed there until 8.30 in the morning when my sister had to break in to get to her.

She was taken back into hospital where they sedated her to have the operation to manipulate her hip joint. After the operation there was a lady on the ward who was constantly screaming and mumbling. I think this lady should have been moved into a room by herself as there were a lot of ill people on the ward who couldn’t get any rest. Needless to say my mum was desperate to leave.

On Tuesday they told my mum she could go home. My mum rang my sister to let her know and then 15 minutes later she was told that she couldn’t go home. Then yesterday morning they said she could go home, they let he out of bed, got her dress and sat her in a chair. She sat there from yesterday morning until 8pm at night waiting for the one man ambulance service to fetch her home.

That day I went to pick up a commode for my mum from the hospital at 5pm and she was sat in a chair. I took the commode to her house where my sister was waiting for my mum. At 8pm a nurse said if the ambulance isn’t here for 8.00pm my mum couldn’t go home. My mum replied that she was going home as she had been sat waiting for long enough. Her bed had been given to someone else so she couldn’t even have a lay down. Eventually my sister had to go and fetch her in her car and my mum looked terrible. She had just had a major operation and I do not think it is acceptable for her to have to sit in a chair all day.

I was told that this had also happened to another Patient who had to wait until 10.30pm to go home. I think this is because the hospital has recently changed contracts with regard to this service.