“Surely somebody is going to help him?”
– by Melvyn Brooks
“Hello, it’s Melvyn here.
I’d like to report on Mr. Cameron’s care/Jeremy Hunt’s care. I would like to say that I was in hospital in September and October 2013 in Canterbury Hospital. I had stones in my kidneys and I was in so much pain.
I cannot fault the A&E. I had to go to my doctor first. Well, not my doctor, who I normally see, but a doctor. He said that I had blocked some tubes and that I probably had some stones in my kidneys. He wrote a letter quickly and said “go down to A&E, I’ll give them a ring and then you can go through quickly.” I was in so much agony. From that point of view it was quite good. My daughter took me down and then my wife came down to the Canterbury Hospital.
A&E – couldn’t fault it, brilliant. It was a little bit slow but, all-in-all, very good. They took me up the ward and gave me morphine to help me – well, painkillers first, then I said “I need something stronger than that, give me morphine.” That sorted me out a bit. In this time I noticed that over in the far side of the ward somebody was rolled off in their bed. There was a notice above the bed – ‘nil by mouth’.
As time went on a bed replaced it and it must have been nine or half past nine at night, somebody else was wheeled into there who had dementia. He couldn’t communicate, but the notice was still above his bed – ‘nil by mouth’.
For the three nights and three days that I was in this ward, that man had no water and no food. There wasn’t a carer there to help him. No carer whatsoever. None of the staff wanted to know about it. I kept saying to them that the guy hadn’t had any water or anything to eat because the people that came around with the food put the food onto his tray. I imagine that the menu they had given him was the same for the guy that they had wheeled out. They were just plonking the food down. I said to them “he’s got dementia and he can’t feed himself” and they said: “well, we haven’t got time.”
I said “surely somebody is going to help him?” to which they responded “go tell the nurse.”
I was still in agony. This went on for another two days and nights.”
