Hostage to medical mismanagement

I spent yesterday evening, and early Monday morning researching and writing a complaint to send to the Local Health Board's Concerns team. Telling the full story from December 2017 until Friday last, involved a lot of cross checking between my diary and this blog. In the end, I had a four page A4 document ready to email. The aim of writing this blog over the past nine years has been to tell my story of retirement ministry and getting old. Over the past year, health concerns have figured more than I could possibly have anticipated, given how blessed I have been with good health and reasonable fitness, even now. I could never have anticipated first hand experience of the breakdown of NHS service provision due to such administrative chaos. I'd love to be able to share this with a journalist and raise public debate about what justice means in the way resources are distributed.

By ten o'clock I emailed my complaint to the Local Health Board Concerns Team and immediately received an automated response. Attached to it was a complaints form and information leaflet. Only much later in the  day did I notice this, but didn't have the energy to deal with this. After lunch, I walked to the Cardiff West constituency offices of our two excellent local assembly members, Mark Drakeford the new First Minister, and Kevin Brennan. I delivered two print copies of the complaint for the attention of the First Minister and the Deputy Health Minister Julie Morgan, who represents Cardiff North. This was done on the recommendation of my friend Roy Thomas, who knows well their interest in health issues as a result of his advocacy work on organ transplant consent. I doubt if my concern is unique. I'm hoping it's well expressed and detailed enough to contribute in a small way to any enquiry into the systemic failure of UHW's administration. Something has to be done.

Conversations with sister in law Ann and my sister June, not to mention Clare all focused on trying to persuade me to seek private surgery in order to finish off the work in progress as soon as possible as it is taking a toll on me and should not be delayed any longer. I hate this prospect. It's feels like giving up on making public medicine as good as it should be, as well as an un-necessary outlay of money. I can sue NHS Wales for negligence and maybe cover the cost of treatment, but there's no guarantee I'd succeed, and every possibility that it would take a long time and be very stressful. Sure, I'd relish a fight to achieve something good, but with my years on earth running out, am reluctant to expend energy on this when there are so many other things I still hope to experience.

After mulling it over, I decided on a tentative first step. I found the contact details of Mrs Cornish the surgeon who's been treating me on the website of The Spire private health care. Before turning in for the night, I wrote to her to ask if she was aware of what was happening, telling her that I have lost confidence in the ability of the system to deliver the desired outcome, asking if she would be willing to take me on as a private patient under The Spire. I have no idea if this will work, or if I will get a response, but I feel I have to take seriously what three people very close to me are saying.

I woke early this morning with all these things going around in my head, feeling tense and unwell. Later, I had a beginnings of a nosebleed, checked by blood pressure and found that it was 180/82. When I took it last Thursday before the awful appointment news arrived it had been 132/70, as it has been now for several weeks. It's the cumulative impact of coping with finding myself trapped, a hostage to failing medical hegemony.

At lunchtime, I visited my GP surgery and asked the practice nurse to check my blood pressure and make a formal record of it, having told her what had gone on recently. Later, one of the GP team on duty listened to my story over the phone, and took notes, promising to write to Mrs Cornish and ask if she knew what was going on. I was pleased and relieved to get this much done in a short time, even if the response arrives lot later. Then, just before five, I had an email from a person at the LHB Concerns team in response to my complaint submitted. Not a robotic reply, but acknowledgement from a real person that an investigation is now under way.

Hopefully this will bring my blood pressure back down into the region where the doctors no longer frown at me.

Starting today, a team of builders are going to be chipping the old and cracked rendering off the back of the house, and applying a fresh coat. This is going to take more than a week, and initially promises to be very noisy. There are three other houses in our neighbourhood having the same thing done right now, while the weather is good, and we often hear the nauseating sound of power hammers vibrating along the walls of our terrace. It's surprising how far the sound travels. Well, sorry guys, but now it's our turn to be a nuisance for a while.