Mother in A&E

A doctor turned up at 1.40am!!! Unbelievable that we had to wait over 12 hours! The doctor gave my mother a full check-up and a anti-sickness injection at 2.10am and some new anti-sickness tablets to take later in the morning – he said he would request that mother's GP come out later today for a full assessment. He also recommended that we stay by her bed to keep an eye on her.

We were all wrecked by daylight. We spent the morning, ringing District Nurses, Tapping House, OT's etc and organising an urgent one day delivery of a hospital bed, slide sheets, over-bed table etc. After lunch a doctor came out from Hunstanton Surgery, a different one to who we were expecting. The doctor recommended that mother go to hospital by ambulance, as she may have an infection of some kind since having her procedure last Thursday. The doctor also gave us a shorter prognosis than we were given recently by another clinician – no words.

We were told the ambulance would be approximately an hour and a half. Whilst we were waiting we managed to clear the dining room of all chairs, coffee table and various things and hoover in preparation of the hospital bed being delivered tomorrow. The ambulance crew turned up at 6pm and took mother to A&E at the QEH, King's Lynn.

On arrival at A&E, there were no beds available anywhere in the hospital and this remained the same throughout the night. Mother had to stay on a trolley (far too long) for approximately 8 hours before they transferred her to a hospital bed when they realised how red she was from laying in the same position on a hard trolley for so long!