A Really Difficult Post

This is going to be a very difficult blog post to write. In fact I've avoided writing it as you willl discover why you will probably see why. As I've mentioned in the past few weeks on this blog, Carol has been unwell. We haven't had a particularly good summer. She was off work from the Academy for the final two weeks of the summer term and then, over August and well into September we've had quite a few visits to Accident and Emergency as well as appointments at Ashfield Medical Centre with doctors as well as the practice nurse. This is due to a great deal of pain she has been experiencing. The first doctors appointment she had she was thought to have a urinary infection and was put on antibiotics. But that did not appear to make any difference. She had real problems sleeping at night with the intense pain. On at least two occasions we went to the Urgent Care Centre at Milton Keynes Hospital and a further couple of times to Accident and Emergency. The last time we went there she was admitted to hospital and spent four days there, eventually moving to Ward 19. Still no cause found for the continuing pain, however she was given a wide variety of different pain relief medication, including tramadol. Eventually she had a further appointment with the practice nurse who did a further examination and then got her referred to the hospital to have an endoscopy appointment. This was on a Sunday (mentioned in an earlier post.) We were to get the results of this investigation the next Tuesday. It was more than a shock when the doctor who gave us the results that the cause of the pain was caused by a lesion. Which meant it was likely to be cancerous. You can imagine our shock. I have to say I almost fell on the floor when we were told. Not something you want to hear at any time, ever, as you can appreciate. There needed to be further investigations, including another endoscopy which uses a camera and is able to take possibly biopsy so that further tests could me done. This happened last Monday, and, unfortunately, they have now confirmed that it is cancerous. We now have to wait for the results from the biopsy and today, Thursday, Carol had a C.T. scan to check that there is no further cancer in any other organ of her body. A huge and very difficult thing to take in from both of us as well as our families. Unfortunately Carol is still continuing to experience great pain, particularly at night, making it very difficult to sleep. Meanwhile she has been signed off work from Milton Keynes Academy. I am going to leave off writing this and will make mention of things as they develop in future posts.

The C.T. scan went incredibly well. The appointment was at 9.30 and we got to the hospital far too early, as we have a habit of doing with most things. Not such a bad thing in itself, I suppose, particularly if you have to contend with traffic as well as parking. We walked to the unit, which we'd been to a couple of weeks previously. As we got there too early the receptionist rang through to find out if Carol could be seen early and apparently there was a gap in the schedule, so there was none of the waiting as we experienced at the endoscopy department a few days earlier. It was all over very quickly and we were soon walking back to the car and coming home, although we did go into the shop at the entrance as Carol said she had a really nasty taste in her mouth, no doubt caused by the dye she had injected into her blood stream to aid the scan and needed a drink of something to get rid of the taste. Taking a great deal of medications, that is one of the side effects that such meds can cause. We also bought a couple of pastries and went home.

More N.H.S. Waiting Rooms-1

Carol still continues to have pain problems. No amount of medication seem to relive this awful situation. She's been on some really powerful medication. We had to ring Ashfield Medical Centre yesterday to get a repeat prescription of Tramadol. You have to go through a really tortuous process to get anywhere near a doctor for an appointment as I've explained in earlier blog posts. A triage system, meaning the receptionist who answers the phone asks you what your problem is and then assigns a doctor to ring you so that he/she can decide whether you need a face-to-face appointment. I think it's to weed out time-wasters (those who have minor ailments: a sore throat doesn't need an appointment: just go to the nearest pharmacist and get an over-the-counter medication, cough syrup or other product. It obviously doesn't need a doctor's appointment and certainly doesn't need a prescription for antibiotics, as an example.) Generally it takes a couple of hours before you get a ring-back and you see a doctor that day. We did eventually get through and she was able to get the doctor to agree on a prescription for Tramadol. We were told that the prescription would be ready for collection 'after 2 p.m.' All very well and I went off to pick this up, hoping that I could then go to the pharmacy which is near the surgery to get it made up and then return home. When I got to the surgery I asked the receptionist for it and she looked for it on the computer system and told me 'it's gone to Sainsbury's (sent electronically). I was somewhat annoyed, as it then meant that I would have to drive to the store in Witan Gate to collect it. (Actually the pharmacy is now run by Lloyd's and not Sainsbury's but is within their store. Don't ask me why it changed. It seemed fine as run by Sainsbury's.) On arrival I asked if the prescription had arrived and I was told it hadn't. It was then that I couldn't for the life of me remember what the drug it was that he prescriptions was for. I knew it was a fairly powerful drug for dealing with pain, but I simply could not remember the name of it. I suggested the pharmacy ring Ashfield M.C. and get them to tell them the name, but they wouldn't without the name of drug the prescription was for. My only choice was to return home and ask Carol what the drug was. When I got home she told me it was Tramadol and I rang Sainsbury's back and when I told them I was informed that, as it was a controlled drug, the surgery couldn't send the prescription electronically. This made sense, because, having been a carer and administration of medication to the client base I worked with was part of my job, I was totally aware that controlled drugs had to be stored carefully, in a locked cupboard, but also had to be carefully signed for, usually by two members of staff, so it was no surprise that they would not send the prescription electronically. By now it was clear that we weren't going to get to the bottom of this situation unless we went to Ashfield Medical Centre and find out what on earth was going on regarding the prescription. The girl of reception said that, having looked at their computer, they had sent the prescription to Sainsbury's. It turned out to be for two other medication that Carol has, but nothing of the Tramadol could be found. Then we said, no doubt it was because it was a controlled drug. After a great deal of scouring around the various files and other places, it turned out that the doctor who was supposed to deal with signing the printed prescriptions hadn't done so and after a further search, the tramadol prescription had somehow slipped through the net. The receptionist said she would go and speak to the doctor, but at the time of speaking she was with a patient. We had to sit and wait in the waiting room whilst all this was going on.

How is it all N.H.S. waiting rooms have such un comfortable seating in them? We've had to endure several of them over the past couple of months, in A and E, at the Urgent Care Centre as well as another out-patient department we went to last week that Carol had to attend following her time in hospital (to see a consultant). They seem to make these facilities as unappealing as possible, the seating in particular as uncomfortable as they can. If you're in A and E as long as we have and you feel like lying down, they've made the long stretch of seats which you'd feel like lying on, have metal bits that make it virtually impossible to lie on as they really cut into your back. I think they deliberately put uncomfortable seating into N.H.S. facilities in a vain attempt to put people off using them. At any rate, the seats I've had to sit on in the last few weeks at least are so designed to make you only want to experience them for at least 20 minutes and certainly no longer. How difficult can it be to have them with at least padded seats? Those plastic chairs in hospital wards don't allow for long sitting as they have a slippery surface that makes you slide off and are extremely uncomfortable. I realise that the N.H.S. is keen to have every surface cleaned in an attempt to combat cross-infection and reduce the risk of N.R.S.A. (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus)  spreading, so plastic surfaces would be easier to keep clean, but do these chairs have to be so uncomfortable

The receptionist eventually returned with the printed, and signed, prescription form, so we could then go to Cox and Robinson a few yards along from the surgery, to get the thing made up and could at last go home.

Hospital of Confusion

Finding your way around Milton Keynes Hospital is something of a nightmare. For a start, they are in the middle of up-grading the place, with the main entrance moved from opposite the main, ground-level carpark. It would appear that THAT entrance goes into Accident and Emergency. When we arrived on Tuesday morning, very early, it was closed off with a sign up telling us to go through another entrance (I think we landed up in A and E through the original door, but I can't remember now.) They've now put the main entrance to the side of the hospital, opposite the multi-storey carpark. A lot of new building going on near the road that goes to the Urgent Care centre (formerly known as the Walk-In Centre.) I think it's going to be a medical teaching centre, as Milton Keynes is a teaching hospital. A lot of the nurses who were in the ward Carol is on have uniforms with 'University of Bedfordshire' or 'Buckingham' and other universities embroidered on them. When we were in A and E there were a couple of A Level students 'shadowing' some of the doctors. I thought they were nurses training, but apparently not.

My main headache at the hospital is finding my way around. It's the craziest layout imaginable. It's in a series of what look like separate buildings, linked by extremely long corridors. You have to make sure you know where you're going and find the colour code for the area that department is in. Carol is currently in Ward 19 and its's in the 'Blue' sector. It's not necessarily finding the ward that causes problems (particularly as the corridors all look identical although they have some really good artworks hung along some of them, which I enjoy looking at, so these are a sort of guide to remember where I am at any particular time.)  but finding my way out, back to ground-level and back to the carpark or the Redway as I walk in along this from Eaglestone. Fortunately, if you get lost, there's always someone to ask and the staff are helpful.

Why, I wonder, did they not just build a series of blocks, instead of having two-storey buildings spread over a large area? It seems such a waste of space somehow. Surely, a six or even eight storey block is going to be more economical as regards space, with less waste with those dreadful long corridors. And then there seems to be so much wasted space BETWEEN the various buildings. Although, saying that, in some places this space is utilised as gardens and quite pleasant courtyards for staff and patients to enjoy.