The Inequalities of Life in the UK, Medical Apartheid.

Hubby is getting his 7cm x 7cm thoracic, spinal deep, grade 4 wound, dressed every day by the local nurses, who keep telling us he should be in hospital, because of the amount of bleeding, swelling . Do the Doctors not have a duty to listen to their concerns ?

It was with some irony, that I watched the news of a certain high profile elderly gentleman being hospitalised with an UTI. Most of us plebs would be thrown a bottle of antibiotics and be told to get on with it. Having said that  I am glad someone in this inequitable country is getting the medical treatment needed to stay healthy, and wish him long life and health, as I would any fellow human being.

So its been 4 months 4 days since Hubby sustained an injury to his back whilst on holiday. The wound is not progressing in a timely manner from the initial, Inflammation Stage è Proliferative èMaturation . Most documents I have read say that stages 1&2 should last no more than 2 months, where as the last stage can take months - years. While he still has the necrotic tissue in place his wound stands no chance of healing over and is a ticking time bomb for possible infection, and further destabilisation of his spine. Only reason he has not got systemically sick already is the broad spectrum antibiotics he is taking. 


There will be no surprise to many readers of this piece, that there is Medical Apartheid in the UK. If you have money you get treated straight away, if not they leave you as long as they think they can get away with , gambling  that you don't get too sick to treat, kind of hoping that you die so problem goes away, or fire fight as you have to go into hospital under emergency rather than urgent conditions. Do not let anyone fool you , your hospital admission unless you are in A&E and at deaths door today, is based firstly on how many spare beds, surgeon schedules, not on whether you have an urgent clinical need to be medically sorted. 


As I said its a gamble taken by the admissions people who do not always know how ill you are, what effects the delay will have on your long term life expectancy or quality of life. One might cynically  ask , and do they care? probably not. There will be no personal accountability for the decisions that they make. 


Make a complaint , be prepared to receive a letter that bears no relation to the reality that you went through, no proper investigation, no root cause analysis, just trite politicking. Remember the NHS is not a learning organisation, in the management organisation meaning of the word , it repeats and repeats the same mistakes over and over again. One life lost or ruined is one too many in my book.


So all I can ask is please do not play Russian Roulette with my Hubby's life, I like having him around. One family funeral is enough this year for anyone.