"My mother's experience"

I want to share a story about my mother's experience, which was really not good. My mother is 90 years old, she suffers with Alzheimers and she is partially sighted.

My mother was taken into hospital via ambulance. I have nothing critical to say about the ambulance staff or service at all, they were great, but I was not allowed to go in with my mother when we arrived.

We don't ever leave her on her own so I forced my way in to see her in the A&E in the end. There was a sign about people with memory loss and how they could be helped in hospital. It said to just contact a member of staff. No-one that I spoke to knew about this scheme, although it was in almost every department. Seemingly a butterfly stamp was supposed to be put on the patients wrist and file to let people know there was a memory problem. I have a photo of it. I did tell them but no one took any notice of this.

At 8pm, my mum was transferred to a ward. I was with her all night. She was vomitting until 6am.

She was then moved to another ward where she spent a week. While she was in this ward that her bed was made up with faeces all over the bottom sheet. She was sitting in a chair at this time. The nurses were rushed off their feet so my friend and I changed the bed.

On the Sunday afternoon my brother was told by a junior doctor that she would be discharged that night.. I phoned to say that I would be up at night with her clothes, only to be told that she was not getting home at all, until her Consultant saw her the next day. My brother and I went up to the ward on the Monday afternoon, only to be told that she was now in the Discharge Lounge. When I opened this door I can only describe what I saw as bedlam. Approx 20 people were in this room waiting to be discharged. Two nurses were run off their feet. My mum was crying as she did not know where she was. It was very noisy. I was told by a nurse that the powers that be prefer patients to go to the discharge lounge to free up beds, but given my mums condition, surely she could have been sat in a chair in the ward until we arrived?

Eventually we were allowed to leave minus medication, which was to be sent to us by taxi that night. Mum was very distraught all the way home in the car (and for the following week.) I phoned again on the day after she'd been discharged as no medication had arrived. I was told they would phone me back. After 3 hours I phoned again to be told that the medication she went in with could not be found, and that the Consultant had decided against giving her any new medication. In other words, we waited at the Discharge lounge for no reason.

She also had compression stockings on for a week and I do not think these had been removed at all, as it was like a snow storm of dry skin, when I took them off!

I was very disappointed by the treatment my Mum received.