A team of nurses was trying to ascertain whether my wife was pregnant. It didn’t seem very likely. She’ll be 57 in a couple of months, went through the menopause over a decade ago and has been on HRT for several years. And she hasn’t had IVF. Insofar as one can be certain about such matters, I believe I have been her only sexual partner for two decades – and I’ve had a vasectomy. Furthermore, were she to be pregnant and go on to give birth she would leap straight into the global top 100 oldest mothers of all time list. So, no, it didn’t seem likely.
A team of three assembled to put screens around her so that she could urinate on her trolley. I could see through the screens from outside
The chain of events that led us to this point had begun in a pub carpark, outside The Anchor, a riverside pub in Barcombe Mill, Sussex, at around 5.30 p.m. last Saturday. We had been to see Virginia Woolf’s house in Rodmell then visited my sister in nearby Lewes and were planning to go on to see my mother in Tunbridge Wells. My wife dropped her handbag as she got out of the car. When she stooped to pick it up something happened. I knew this because she began screaming, bellowing in pain. This would be the first of many bouts of screaming in the ensuing hours.
I came around to her side of the car to see her doing what looked like a badly executed version of the yoga crab position. Between gasping breaths, she managed to explain that she thought she had dislocated her (artificial – after early-onset arthritis) right hip. I was sceptical that she could have done this with such a routine movement but she was insistent, loudly so.
We debated our options. These came down to either calling an ambulance which would presumably take us to Brighton, even more miles from home; or we could try to get her back into the car and press on Tunbridge Wells, nearer to home, and see if it became less painful. It was by now 6 p.m. We both had visions of her still lying face down on the gravel as the pub closed at 11.30 p.m. with no ambulance. So we managed to get her vertical and she wiggled while screaming – sounds I last remembered hearing from her when in childbirth – onto the back seat.
By the time we got to Tunbridge Wells, it was evident that things hadn’t improved. If anything they had worsened. We went straight to the town’s hospital, just off the A21 in Pembury. I had worked there during the university summer break in 1986, cleaning blood and gore from surgical instruments after use, the most macabre job I have ever had. Years later I discovered that one of my then colleagues was a necrophiliac murderer.
The hospital has since been knocked down and rebuilt. I wasn’t sure how to navigate its current incarnation. I spoke to the A&E triage nurse and explained the situation and that I would need help to get my wife out of the car. At her instruction, I drove into a bay meant for ambulances. An informal team of nurses and a couple of ambulance workers gathered together and managed to slide a gurney under my wife to lift her, while she screamed. One of the nurses asked me why on earth I’d put her back in the car and not called an ambulance. I stared at the floor, chastened.
She was taken quickly into the back area of A&E and put onto a trolley. A doctor came while I was moving the car and said he agreed her hip did indeed appear to be dislocated. This shouldn’t happen to a newish (2020 vintage) artificial one, so my wife had to explain, several times over, that she hadn’t been doing any gymnastics. An X-ray was taken. An orthopaedic doctor then came and used his hands to act out a thigh bone no longer connected to a hip bone. It’s quite easy to put back, he said, it only takes five minutes: ‘It just pops back in. But you need to go under general anaesthetic to allow us to do it cleanly.’
Everything had been going quite quickly until this point. She was given morphine and the screaming volume dipped. But then he said that the procedure despite its brevity could not be done tonight. ‘It’s because it’s a Saturday,’ he explained. But hopefully she could be the first patient into theatre tomorrow, first thing, 8 a.m. ‘Get you in and out and home’. She was moved from the corridor into a bay with a curtain – a room of sorts.
There was an old man sitting beside us who had had a fall and was told he could go home once transport had been arranged. He had waited four hours for this the last I saw him, despite regularly volunteering that he ‘could walk home from here’. I was tempted to take him myself. At 11 p.m. I was told I should leave and try to get some sleep. It cost £4 to exit the car park. I slept like a baby till 6 a.m. My wife didn’t. The ward was noisy with moans, groans and beeping.
I was back at 7.30 a.m. Then 8 a.m. came and went. Nothing happened. No theatre trip. Several times she was asked if she wanted food. ‘I’m not meant to eat,’ she would reply, hungrily. An orthopaedic specialist came to talk to her and asked her detailed questions about what had happened. We said we’d been told she should be seen at 8 a.m. He said we might get in by 7 p.m. She told him that she had read that leaving a dislocated hip untreated for more than a few hours could cause serious life-changing complications. He said this didn’t apply to plastic hips. She said she wanted a second opinion. He said: ‘Who from? I’m the only hip specialist here,’ laughing. Then he walked away.
I waited till he reappeared from his rounds. Please, I said, surely if it only takes five minutes it’s not good for anyone to have her waiting for 24 hours. He said it may be possible to do it at 3 or 4 p.m. but no sooner. He left on that compromise of sorts. We didn’t see him again.
At 11 a.m. after much discussion with a nurse, she was allowed a few sips of water. At noon they transferred her from A&E onto a ward on the third floor. We were told there was a room there. But when we got to the ward we were further told that the room still had to be cleaned. In the meantime, she was put in a corridor.
After an hour in this corridor, she tried to accelerate matters and explained she hadn’t been to the toilet since the afternoon of the previous day. A team of three assembled to put screens around her so that she could urinate on her trolley. I could see through the screens from outside. ‘I’m not going to the toilet in the corridor’ she insisted. There was the sound of a phone ringing almost constantly. When it did stop it would start again almost immediately. No one ever appeared to answer it. An old man, apparently with dementia, in the adjacent room kept intoning ‘help me, help me’. I eventually went to ask him if I could help him but he didn’t look up and just kept repeating it.
Someone in uniform came by intermittently. We asked them for updates but they said that we needed to speak to someone else. When we spoke to the right person there was more talk of the room not being clean. I asked if I could clean it myself. Apparently not. ‘It’s procedure,’ they told us. ‘There’s only one cleaner for the whole hospital so we have to wait,’ they said. ‘It’s because it’s a Sunday.’
‘Why did you bring us from A&E – where we had a room to wait in – to a corridor where there’s no room?’ we asked. ‘So that you could be the next in line,’ they said. ‘That’s how it works. We can send you back to A&E if you want but then you’ll have to start again tomorrow.’ As an apparent sweetener, someone at this point produced a pillow, saying: ‘You’re lucky – they’re as rare as hens’ teeth in here.’ It was indeed a fortunate development. For the previous 19 hours, my wife had had only the trolley’s black plastic mattress for comfort.
We had had our dogs with us when all of this happened and I was having to ensure they were fed and watered, unlike my wife. This meant a good deal of coming and going. Each time I went in or out of the ward there were two sets of secure doors to pass through. But there was no means to request access to open them. So I had to stand there peering through the glass and wait until someone passed then gesticulate to beg them to come over to admit me. A bell would have been quite the innovation – though whether anyone would answer is another question.
Finally, the room became ready. It was a nice room, very clean. You couldn’t hear the phone ringing so loudly and there was a window with a view of the car park. At 3 p.m. they came to prepare her for surgery. This was when the hospital team insisted that they needed to test whether my wife was pregnant before they could treat her. It wasn’t clear why. This required a urine sample which in turn required her to move from the position in which she had been lying for the last 19 hours: face down on a trolley with her hip raised to one side. The only alternative was to take a blood test but this would require waiting another 24 hours. ‘I can’t move,’ she said. ‘We’ll move you,’ they countered. By the time I was ushered out of the room, there were five of them. I went as far as I could down the corridor to try to avoid hearing what followed but her screaming still reached me loud and clear. After several minutes of screaming it was established that indeed she was not pregnant.
This was a relief not just because it meant she could be treated as planned but also because I could discard any thoughts of how to tell our children, 24, 21 and 17, that a sibling was on the way. It transpired that the anaesthetist had told the nursing team he wouldn’t put her under unless there was a negative test. They wheeled her away.
I went out to get some supplies for her to return to. It was going to be £6 to leave the car park. Or for £10 I could get a week’s parking. Hoping I wouldn’t need a week, I paid the £10 and went to the car, drove to the barrier and inserted the ticket. It didn’t open. I got out and explained to the two drivers behind me that I was stuck. They reversed. I returned to my space, parked again, walked the 200 yards back to the machine and buzzed for assistance. A voice came on: ‘Oh those seven-day tickets never work,’ it said. ‘What’s your ticket number?’ It was too small to read. She agreed, finally, to let me out.
I came back to find my wife was still not back in her room. It was 5 p.m. The signs said visiting finished at 7 p.m. Wales-Australia was going to be on at 8 p.m. I managed to turn it on and get the sound going. But when I tried to change the channel it said ‘feature not available’. I went to ask for help from the patient next door. ‘There aren’t any remote controls,’ she explained. ‘So you can only watch the channel it’s set on?’ I asked. ‘That’s right – and I’m lucky because mine is on BBC1.’ Countryfile was about to begin for her so I left her in peace to enjoy it and went back to our room. Our TV was set to BBC2. The rugby was on ITV.
My wife was brought back on a trolley at 6.57 p.m. She was visibly woozy. I managed to ascertain that the pain had subsided and that she was hungry and thirsty. I begged them to let me out to get some drinks and let me back in even though it would be after 7p.m. It took 20 minutes to get out and back through the secure doors four times to deliver a lukewarm Diet Coke. I considered further trying for food, a pizza perhaps. But the hospital was now noticeably emptier and I doubted whether I would get back in at night.
The hot food had finished. She was given a sandwich of sliced white bread, chicken with mayonnaise and a sweet yoghurt. There was no fruit. For breakfast, there was a choice of sweet cereals or toast. She asked for brown toast. They gave her white. There was still no fruit.
She was told she could be discharged once she’d seen the occupational therapist, got her papers – she would be signed off sick for six weeks, which appeared to be thought a perk – and some drugs. The first two happened relatively quickly. The occupational therapist found her a toilet seat adaptor that she wasn’t supposed to give out. We were extremely grateful.
Several times she was asked if she wanted food. ‘I’m not meant to eat,’ she would reply, hungrily
But the drugs didn’t seem to be coming. They took her off the ward in a wheelchair to a ‘discharge area’ which doubled as an overflow for A&E. It wasn’t the most restful environment. I gave them 90 minutes before chasing up the drugs. It turned out they had been ready for some time. ‘It’s because it’s a Monday,’ they said.
The drug medley was, according to the paperwork, to include ‘enough morphine to last ten days’. The dispensing instructions said to take 5ml every hour. The bottle contained 100ml. ‘That’s not going to last ten days – it’s only enough to last 20 hours.’ They looked confused and went away. Another long pause ensued. They came back. ‘It’s double strength,’ they said. ‘So it will last 40 hours – less than two days – whereas ten days is 240 hours,’ we pointed out. ‘So it’s not even a fifth of what she’s meant to have.’
Sensing that this impasse would lead us into another sustained delay we decided to leave and try to sort out any shortfall later. As I write the supply is getting very low. When I pressed the assistance button at the car park barrier once again to ask to be let out for a final time, I checked my watch. It was 40.5 hours since we had shown up seeking a ‘five minute treatment.’
As we drove home my wife’s phone pinged with an SMS message asking her to take part in a customer satisfaction survey for the hospital, asking whether she had been treated with dignity. She tried to fill it in but they had sent her the form for outpatients rather than emergency admissions. None of the questions made sense.
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