At Father's Day last year, my Dad had just got home after about a month in hospital including a week in intensive care. He's always been chesty all his life but a bad chest infection over the winter which didn't respond to anything the GP gave him and kept getting worse over time led to intensive care and a very bleak predicted outcome but he pulled through despite the odds.
I still remember visiting after work as usual ( I work five minutes walk from the hospital) to find he had taken a serious turn for the worse and they wanted to move him to intensive care but he kept refusing to go and when he saw me he insisted I went and got my car to take him home to die. I was unable to get hold of my Mum on her mobile (and I also phoned everywhere I thought she might have been) so I effectively over-ruled my Dad and had him took to care. They told me he was actually delirious with lack of oxygen anyway. When I saw him wired up to every conceivable machine and breathing apparatus and heavily sedated I did wonder if I had made the right decision to effectively prolong his misery.
One year on, he is plagued with hip pain and on the waiting list for hip replacement but otherwise alive and well - "Fight the good fight fight with all thy might" The fact that he saw it all through without a single word of complaint has left me very little tolerance for people who moan about silly things.
As an aside, for all the people out there who have nothing better to do than to phone radio phone-ins or write stupid comments on newspaper websites moaning about how useless the health service is, I have to say the care and treatment my dad received from everyone - the doctors, nurses, consultants, etc and even the dinner ladies was nothing short of incredible. There is room for improvement (mostly at management level) but the people who actually treat and look after patients show incredible care and dedication and deserve to be paid twice whatever they get paid.
I still remember visiting after work as usual ( I work five minutes walk from the hospital) to find he had taken a serious turn for the worse and they wanted to move him to intensive care but he kept refusing to go and when he saw me he insisted I went and got my car to take him home to die. I was unable to get hold of my Mum on her mobile (and I also phoned everywhere I thought she might have been) so I effectively over-ruled my Dad and had him took to care. They told me he was actually delirious with lack of oxygen anyway. When I saw him wired up to every conceivable machine and breathing apparatus and heavily sedated I did wonder if I had made the right decision to effectively prolong his misery.
One year on, he is plagued with hip pain and on the waiting list for hip replacement but otherwise alive and well - "Fight the good fight fight with all thy might" The fact that he saw it all through without a single word of complaint has left me very little tolerance for people who moan about silly things.
As an aside, for all the people out there who have nothing better to do than to phone radio phone-ins or write stupid comments on newspaper websites moaning about how useless the health service is, I have to say the care and treatment my dad received from everyone - the doctors, nurses, consultants, etc and even the dinner ladies was nothing short of incredible. There is room for improvement (mostly at management level) but the people who actually treat and look after patients show incredible care and dedication and deserve to be paid twice whatever they get paid.