Being pulled apart. Part 1: A not so Happy New Year

A couple of days before new year 2011 I noticed that Beryl had a "rattle" on her chest whenever she breathed and was worried. I thought at first it was just the phlegm there due to her stopping smoking earlier in the year. By Friday the 30th of December I was sufficiently worried to call out the doctor who reckoned that she had a chest infection and prescribed antibiotics. By midnight, after only two doses of antibiotics I was about to go to bed but could not as I percieved that her breathing had gotten worse. I panicked and phoned 999 for an ambulance. After much deliberation by the ambulance service it was decided that they would send out an emergency doctor rather than send an ambulance, twenty minutes it was said it would take for them to arrive. One hour later, no Doctor. I phoned 999 again and this time an ambulance was called, it was now around 1.30am on New Years Eve.

It was six thirty am on that day that, after being ignored every hour, on the hour whilst we were enconsed in a cubicle, that some junior doctor finally decided to admit her. I noticed that the A&E was not exactly over crowded and saw the doctor, and in turn, the nurse chatting and laughing as though they had no work to do and was unimpressed, to say the least. I believe in the National Health Service but I do despair at the way it is going, I really do.

By six thirty that new years eve morn I was exhausted as we put Beryl into a bed on a ward until, in turn, a nurse and a doctor saw her and I was needed to attend. Apart from the usual form filling I was needed to reasure her and help hold her while they stuck needles in her arm, one for a blood sample and another for the insertion of a cannula into the back of her hand for intrevenous drips of antibotics and saline. I got home briefly at around 10 am and fell asleep exhausted.

I visited at three pm that new years eve and Beryl's arm was a mass of bruises from the numerous invasions into her veins, later the cannula was to be transplanted into her stomach and another mass of bruise ensued. I wept for her pain later that day.

Beryl was released from the hospital on January the 3rd 2012, the same day her brother Colin was cremeated, her brother who was wracked with vascular dementia, the dementia that ultimately killed him, things do not bode well and I know the outcome of this scenario, it's just when?

The next upheaval is when Beryl went into respite whilst the council removed the deadly Asbestos that has been with us this last forty odd years. This upheaval took place on Tuesday the 17th of January.

Part two to be continued...