And there were various things which, they weren't the kind of things that you would want to make an official complaint about, but I wasn't always treated, well I was misinformed in some things, and often when my drips ran out, I was on a pump, I would have to keep ringing my bell for them to come and to change them, and I was sometimes a bit frightened that there was going to be an air bubble and, you know, you don't know, do you? You get a bit sort of panicky about these things. So, and I was in the side room a lot of the time, which was very good in some ways but you were sort of a bit invisible. I mean there were times when, one day I went 6 hours and nobody came to say anything to me or see if I was all right and they just, and when I did get quite upset about having been left my husband complained and they said, “Well why don't you ring the bell?” And, I said, “But, I'm not that kind of a person, but it would just be nice if you came and said, 'How are you doing? Is there anything I can get you?? or…”
What about the doctors? What were they like?
Again I didn't see them a lot. They would sort of march in and say, “How are you?” Look at the chart at the bottom of the bed and walk out again. There was very little chat. I did notice the person in the room next door was a man, and my haematologist is a man, and they would chat a bit more. I don't know, I don't know whether it was just because they didn't know what to talk about or, he wasn't unpleasant at all but, yeah, they were OK. I, there was a co-ordinator as well when I had my stem cell, a transplant co-ordinator who actually was supposed to be the person that could give you the time to answer your specific questions that you didn't like to ask anybody else. I could never get hold of him, or rarely get hold of him, and I actually didn't find him helpful at all. And I only ever saw him once, twice, in the three and a half weeks I was in hospital. One was to give me a nebuliser thing, which is very unpleasant, and he had to get out of the room as quickly as possible apparently because it would affect him. And one more time and that's all I saw of him. And I never saw him afterwards. So, it wasn't great but. |
