A letter of Complaint to the GP.

Since April/May, since lockdown really, about 7 months. My Other Half has been having trouble with his right eye.

He complained of a kind of double vision, intermittent at first, we rang the GP but they weren’t helpful and to be honest we were not good at explaining.

So in the beginning of lockdown as it was worse we took him to Eye Casualty at the Leicester Royal Infirmary and due to the pandemic we were not allowed in with him so we posted him through the door and went away and worried for a couple of hours.

We picked him up “Nothing to worry about, a Visual Migraine”, we were doubtful but relieved and went home. We have dealt with his migraine for 60 years but we were willing to believe them, maybe. We were fools!

Time moved on and with terrible pain and no satisfaction we ended up back in Eye Casualty after our own Optician aborted the normal eye test wrote a letter to the Hospital and sent him (They still wouldn’t let me in) to Casualty on a Saturday afternoon. This time they diagnosed a Stroke! Too late to save the sight in his eye but now a detached retina as well, and pain which in spite of scans and injections and lasers did not really go away.

7 months down the line, we have learnt a lot. I now insist and have to argue every time we go to the Hospital that I go in with him, averagely about once a fortnight and take notes of names, instructions etc. There are things that they forget to say, they presume you know, that you can only get a hospital prescription from the hospital pharmacy! We only got that wrong once but it caused several hours of the family running backwards and forwards to get his medication and there were other things.

And more injections and lasers and a whole cocktail of different eye drops, and a discussion with about 5 specialists about what to do next. They are still trying to work out what would be best but have finally managed to control to some degree the swelling at the back of his blind eye which causes him such agony with another mixture of different eye drops and have sent us away until January or until he is in pain again – whichever comes first.

We have decided that the mis-diagnosis in the beginning is past and all the shouting in the world won’t fix his eye now

But now we are here 14th/10/2020 and we are still having to fight for what we need.

The letters from the Hospital to the GP lag, because we go so often and there are many, and all the way through the hospital have changed the medication almost every time because we have been on a trial and error basis.

This has mostly been ok because the Hospital have given us the prescriptions (Mostly), but now we are cast adrift so to speak on the mercy of the GP and we need more eyedrops, 3 different sorts once a day and one different one twice a day and it is crucial that we don’t miss any and we are running out.

I rang the Surgery last Friday and after some delay because they had lost the permission forms that we had filled in, in June and handed in that enable us to speak for each other (We went down and gave them another copy) and explained. They assured me that they had the latest hospital letter and knew what to prescribe. We discussed it and I said what she read out didn’t sound the same, letter or medication, she assured me that it was.

48 hours later because you have to wait that long, I went and got the eyedrops from the Chemist and the Pharmacist checked through with me what we should have and what we actually got and one of the drugs was wrong and one unobtainable for about a fortnight.

At our GP Surgery you have to queue and discuss your problems with the receptionist in the carpark and for 20 minutes she listened and looked up our problem ( the queue of people suitably distanced behind me growing), and she explained to me that the prescription was right and I told her what the pharmacist had told me. And I mentioned about the other drops that he couldn’t get. She said I would have to sort out finding drops that the local pharmacist couldn’t get myself and to try at least 5 others. and to wait in the carpark whilst she consulted someone else about the wrong prescription.

I went and whilst I waited consulted a different pharmacist who confirmed that what they had prescribed was not right and also instead of going around to all the local chemists for the eyedrops that he hadn’t got either that I go home and look on the computer.

Eventually after a while the Surgery decided that I was right and they had looked at the wrong letter and told me that so many letters was confusing! In our initial discussion I had pointed out to them that this might have been the problem.

So today we can pick up a different, correct prescription for the originally wrong eyedrops and after another silly conversation at the GP’s receptionist about having to wait another 48 hours, which we cannot do, pick up the missing eyedrops from a different Chemist.

And what would have happened if I hadn’t checked and just put the wrong drops in, at best they wouldn’t have worked but eventually have left him in pain again, or they would have made things worse and either way we would have faced another emergency trip to AE.

A copy of this or a precis of this is going on a complaints form to the GP.

I consider that we have had poor treatment from the NHS over the last 7 months and the picture at the top is to prove that he “Attent Dead” to quote a favourite author.

So at that point I thought we had finished this saga, but no there is another chapter!

Today 14th October he went to pick up his eye drops, the ones from Barwell, that no-one else has in stock. A slight glitch because the Pharmacist needed a Hospital No. that wasn’t on the prescription, but she sorted that by ringing the GP and then she only managed 2 boxes, enough for 40 days, instead of three on the prescription because they are out of stock. Who knew? However she gave him an IOU and told him to come back in a fortnight.

He then went to our own Chemist for the mis-prescribed correction, they knew nothing and hadn’t heard from the GP.

I rang the GP, apparently for no good reason except that is the way they always do it – sometimes, they didn’t electronically send it but waited for the Chemist to pick it up late this morning.

Why didn’t anyone tell me this when I was talking to them for several hours yesterday afternoon?

As you can imagine my patience is by now wearing a little thin, however I managed to keep things together whilst I had a very rambling conversation with the woman who runs front of house at the Surgery. She did her best but as always is the case, she wasn’t in yesterday and listened, sometimes and gave polite platitudes and left me feeling just as angry. She did say she would run it all by the Doctors themselves, in her defence!

So now we are setting off for the Pharmacy again, fingers crossed and calling in a the Surgery for a Complaints form to attach this monologue to.

I don’t want an apology, I just want better service please.

N.H.S!

My other half has just rung me.  He is a lot better, not quite himself but functioning.

Apparently the nurse, in the middle of the night told him that he could come home this morning.  He is disappointed to discover that the Doctor says it will probably be Saturday.  No surprise to me!

Is there some reason that certain members of the nursing profession think that just because you are wearing a split back nightie that you have to be spoken to like a child.  This is the same woman who I spoke to last night when I rang to see how he was.  She managed to convince me that he was improving, but  in rather a condescending manner, explaining that a reaction to the anesthetic was normal, which I know.  What I also know is that leaving someone without liquid for 24 hours causes dehydration, sickness and eventually confusion and worse.  All she had to do was read his notes, and act accordingly.  We are not all ignorant just because we are not members of the caring profession.

Pity the poor souls who have no one to fight their corner for them, the confused and incoherent, whose symptoms are just put down to, ignorance or old age, when perhaps it is only dehydration and lack of care.

As I get older I realise why really old people sometimes switch off and seem to give up.  Sometimes it must be easier than trying to make people listen when you need them to,  not just when it suits them.  You can write all the patients charter’s in the world, and the hospital is full of them, but really they are useless, most of us  want  care with a bit of dignity when we are frightened and sick.

Sorry got on my soap box there for just a moment.  Normal service will be resumed etc.