My younger daughter is at university at Canterbury in Kent. And on Sunday we were going to go down to Canterbury to pick up Lou and her boyfriend. But on saturday she said she wasn't feeling very well. Now I had been getting really bad tummy pain all week, and especially on Saturday. And my family are all a bit psychic like that - we know when others are sick or hurt - or die actually. Or at least my younger sister in Dublin and I always feel these things and exchange notes from times to time. Lou is at the independent stage and wouldn't share the exact problem. but when her boyfriend rang us at 5.30 am Sunday morning from the hospital I was up and dressed and ready to go - but we couldn't get him back on the phone to get any more detail. When we rang the hospital they said she had been discharged. Then Jo her flatmate who had driven them to the hospital said she hadn't come home. So off we went then, first to Canterbury and then to Margate - because that is where the emergency hospital is. Boyfriend Stubbs finally rang and said which ward they were in - so we went through more road works - they are digging up the whole of Kent I think, and when we got there and enquired they still said she wasn't there - discharged apparently. So we went to the ward we thought she might be - a women's ward - and there she was - v. sick my poor darling with Stubbs who was v. tired and amazing hanging in there while she tried to be sick yet again.
Now I will defend the NHS to the hilt despite years of rarely used private cover for the whole liberal ethos of giving equal care to everyone. And Margate Hospital is modern and very clean. But a computer system not properly used??? Losing a patient from the system???. Now, sick enough to admit -- but then no doctor or diagnosis for 9 hours?? A young registrar turned up at 2 pm talked to Stubbs and Lou and concluded it might be a 'urine infection', might be appendicitis - didn't say to stop eating and drinking and didn't order any scan. Lou will not admit to pain. I gave birth to her without any anaesthetic and she was a breech baby (my second). She won't even take asprin. If she bravely says 'It doesn't hurt' you have to be careful. So I was telling the nurses 'look she is sicker than you think'... And then like all nice university girls she had loads of visitors in the afternoon. Then she was very sick - and finally another female registrar appeared, called I think by the nurses, who asked more questions, ordered the scan (I think it might have just been a small hand held machine - but it confirmed the probablity of appendicitis) and they then rang for and got a surgeon in , who took a look and ordered morphine (!), checked she had thrown up every thing she had eaten and took her off to surgery. Meanwhile the first registrar came and apologised for mis-diagnosis!!! Lou returned looking much better but unable by then (midnight!) to tell us what had been done, followed by the nurses throwing us out of the hospital, and we have not mananged to talk to a doctor since, although I was able to glance at her notes while the nurse explained that they had to remove the appendix and a section of bowel lining - as Louise herself said " It would have been better if they had got to it before it burst!!
So now I have to thank Stubbs and Jo and Lou's flatmates and Darcy who came down especially from Cambridgeshire to Margate only to see Lou being very sick indeed. And I will thank Margate Hospital, but they didn't really cover themselves in glory over what is quite a common diagnosis, partly because it seems to me that they have a poor cover of personnel and equipment access at the weekend. The first registrar should have been sent much sooner - we wonder whether the lack of a computer record of admission was a problem here - and then should have had back up to check his diagnonsis and Lou's prognosis. But pushy middle class mums like me are better at asking questions and seeking action. And I spent most of last year in New Zealand while my father went through a series of operations following a DVT in his leg, where in a remote country area I made mistakes in not getting help quickly enough. But a large teaching hospital - the wonderful Dunedin Hospital and the University of Otago Medical Hospital or our own Addenbrookes in Cambridge clearly has more resources than one stuck in a small town at the edge of Kent. So we just hope the surgeon has cleared up the damage - we don't know because we haven't spoken to him, and Lou has no long term damage to her bowel etc.
And hopefully both will be home for Thursday night, along with my older daughter Nic and her boyfriend and we will have a full house which means I lose my office space for a few days. Blogging doesn't really romantise such issues, but I guess it means you can bore in secret about the mundane ... . I have been thinking about the academics of the banal - the descriptive over the deeper analysis lately. I didn't mean to get sidetracked into family - but hey, I' m a mother!
Happy Easter to all.
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