By Karen Lockney
Editorial note: All the statistics on the NHS can sometimes hide the intensely human side of a health service struggling to cope with the politically imposed burdens of low pay, understaffing and lack of investment. But this description of an episode, by one of our readers, reflects the authentic experience of thousands of working class people up and down the country every day.
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The beautiful, broken NHS and my beautiful, a little bit broken today, mum. Bonus episode: why you should support the strikes, and if you don’t want to by the time you’ve finished reading this, you can stick your Covid claps where the sun never shines.
My daughter and I were eating a Greggs next to Lake Ullswater and the world looked glorious, pale blue and frosty misty. A call: your mum is on the way to A&E, the chest pains she told you had got better, have got worse. No need for you to come, I hear her say. I go, obviously.
Reception full of people with flu and who’ve had falls
First angels of this tale, my two cousins who take her to South Tyneside Hospital, where I was born, and where my dad died. Always, when I turn in the gates, I smell the freshly shaved wood in the workshop my dad sometimes took me to, when he was a joiner here, something I last smelled when I was seven, as he left then, lingers here.
She got there around 2.30, it will be 12 hours before she gets a bed. I get there 4.30. She’d had another funny turn. Only one person can be with her, so the angels go home and I sit with her in Bay 5. She looks OK, talking and everything, in her Christmas jumper. The pain moves around, her fingers are blue.
The next angel is the porter, takes us to Michael, the archangel who battles with Satan, here in human form as a radiographer. The porter, I think Ray, says, ‘Divvent panic pet.’ He tells me England will win; Saka will be man of the match. Not an angel of prophecy.
A nurse angel comes by, apologetic, there should be six nurses on, there are three. No bank staff to be had. Reception is full of people with flu and falls. There’s no food on the unit, cafe and shop are shut, only porters can go to canteen but there’s only two on not four, but she has a couple of packets of ginger nuts and makes some toast. After I came round from surgery after having my daughter, I thought NHS toast was the best food I would ever eat.
Callum, doctor angel comes, asks gentle questions. Not a typical cardiac presentation, but women can present in funny ways, and this has to be a diagnosis of exclusion, so she needs a blood test six hours after the worst pain, a further four hours off. She is to be admitted but there’s a wait for beds.
Dad tried to get a sick note to watch the football
He asks her to rate the pain, she says 8 now and 10 before. This she had not mentioned to me. England lose, my daughter texts me to say she will never eat a baguette again. My mum tells me about when my dad tried to get a sick note so he could watch Sunderland, but the doctor sent him packing.
The cleaner comes. She’s just opted for permanent nights, 7 on and 7 off, as her daughter is having a fourth baby and she can be there for her more this way. She’s done this job for thirteen years and it’s changed beyond recognition. I’m a bit obsessed, she says, always got my eyes open to notice things, keep it clean and safe for people. Not the same in my own house at the minute, mind.
An angel moves mum off a trolley to a bed, still in the same room, still waiting. We chat. Do you think the royal family is racist, asks my mum. That passes an hour. Glad we got that sorted. Mind you, she says, don’t be mentioning politics to these staff, we need them to like us! There’s no pillows and no blankets – gold dust, round here, an angel says. I get a blanket from my car.
After midnight a Porter has a chance to go to the canteen, and a ham sandwich arrives for mum and a coffee for me. I dose off half on my plastic chair, head on the bed and my mum puts her hand on it. I was born here. Time passes. She tells the tale of my birth, dramatic and I’ve heard it many times and think I trumped it with my daughter, but hospitals produce hospital tales and we talk about some of them.
The same people waiting for beds, waiting, waiting
1.10am and a bed is free, we just need a Porter. 2.10 I ask if it might be much longer. There is no transfer team here, an angel tells me. There is in Sunderland and it’s not fair as we are in the same trust, every weekend the same, people waiting for beds, waiting and waiting.
Paramedic angels walk past, bringing in more people to wait. Gets busy after 2, they say. In one bay a man lies with an ankle at a funny angle, another man has a knee pouring with blood. A couple sit holding on to each other. Lots of people coughing. A nurse does obs next door. Harry can’t hear very well. ‘I need a urine sample, Harry.’
‘A what, pet?’
‘A URINE sample!’
‘A what?’
‘A wee sample!’
‘Fucking hell pet, aye, nae bother.’
There will be no porter, so it transpires we can walk and it’s round the corner. The woman opposite asks where she is and can she have a blanket. Our angel has to get back to her two other angels, because there should be five. I will get them to bring a blanket, she says. Half an hour later no-one has seen us and she’s still asking for a blanket. I go to the station. Two mins he says, he’s a bit sharp but who can blame him.
Twenty minutes later he comes with a blanket and he sees to my mum. I have to go, no visitors allowed here. I leave her in the machine-beeping dark. Outside it has snowed and I sit in my car while it defrosts and I watch the ghosts I don’t believe in swirl around the white world.
My mum rings me at 9. It was a heart attack, although minor, and she will be kept in to see a cardiologist tomorrow. In all their over worked, understaffed, under resourced, late night, early hours, night shift broken system, they do an extra test and find the problem and they try to treat it.
It’s a waiting game. Divvent worry, pet. Support the strikes, though – the nurses and ambulance workers and cleaners and assistants are trying to save a broken and beautiful system, and at the moment they have my mum in their care and there is a battle raging for good. I want to fight and fight and fight.
