Admission of failure

I am in a good position to report from the NHS frontline, having been in hospital with pneumonia for just over a week from 28 December.

I was admitted following an early evening visit from a district nurse to the home I share with my younger daughter, her husband and their three children. The nurse rang A&E to advise them of my impending arrival but warned us that there was a four-hour wait for an ambulance. My daughter therefore decided to drive me in, and we arrived at a packed casualty unit. I was desperate for oxygen and my daughter begged at the reception desk for me to be triaged to access some, with no success. At 11.30 p.m. I was finally examined and hooked up to an oxygen supply.

I was found a bed in the admissions ward at 4 a.m., in an atmosphere reminiscent of a war zone. We were a mixed bunch: a minxy starlet type who had overdosed and whose miserable-looking geezer boyfriend slept in a chair by her bedside until she was discharged; a person in a pink nightie with a deep bass voice, identifying as female; an elderly case of self-neglect who had to be cut out of her underwear, nits removed from her nether regions by two kind and sympathetic nurses; a woman who went for a scan and was then moved to the operations ward. Patients came and went at lightning speed, often in the night. The place was not clean.

The shared loo was set (as were all the others in this ten-year-old hospital) lower off the ground than is convenient for us oldies. Brushing one’s teeth inches away from a shared toilet (used also by the overdose boyfriend) is a third-world experience that I do not wish to repeat. Using the shower at the end of a corridor was frowned upon, hardly surprising since it had no grab handles and required a hard-pressed member of staff to escort you there.

A well-meaning nurse, reaching over for a switch behind the chair next to my bed, dislodged my heavy NHS walking stick another member of staff had thoughtfully propped up, hitting me smartly on the head as it fell.