With the Easter weekend 2021 imminent, the patient transfer service I use most Mondays to Fridays is not operating. I therefore set out to extend the Saturday and Sunday visits to me at home by district nurses for vital daily post bowel cancer surgery wound dressing changes to cover Good Friday and Easter Monday. I was told this can't be arranged until the last minute (today) but I got the district nurses head office to book me in for it from Last Monday. Today I visited a Preston clinic, using patient transport. The nurse who saw me, without even asking me, started making a phone call to book me into a remote clinic for Saturday and Sunday (no effort at all to discuss Friday and Monday). I told her to terminate the call to hear me out to which she told me I was very rude. She has decided that as I am mobile (I can walk short distances with a stick), I should be denied patient transport - Apparently you have to be near paraplegic or have a carer to qualify for this in her mind. She has tried twice before to compromise this service for me). I get easily exhausted, my condition leaves me anaemic and being on universal credit (unemployed) it would cost me £10 per taxi ride if I paid to travel (£80. 00 over the four return journeys over Easter alone) - her authoritarian indifference to listening to me after a virtual repeat of a conversation we have had twice before when she seemed more willing ultimately to hear me out) is totally unacceptable.
Hi Forester42
So sorry to read this, I know when Janice was really ill and sleeping on a bed in our living room with an open wound on her stomach that was being dressed every day one of the district nurses said as she could walk and I could drive she should be going to the surgery rather than on home visits - helpful not - the other nurses on the team were actually quite shocked that she would say that but there seemed to be a hint that there was something else going on in her life that they were not telling us. When my wife recovered from all that had happened and actually put her in that position she made a formal complaint about the (lack of) treatment by her gynaecologist - we ended up with a written apology from the CEO of the trust with the promise lessons had been learnt.
I had some unfortunate news on my treatment for arthritis that really got to me and I spoke to my GP about it. He offered to write to the hospital on my behalf but sad "the ignore me pretty much the same way they ignore you".
Lightbulb moment for me - I knew how to fix that, phone call to the PALS department and explained my problem and the next day my physio called my and said "how can we help?".
Hope you find a solution that works for you.
<<hugs>>
Steve
