Today (Tuesday 11th Oct) has proved to be a difficult day.
The week had actually started well, Martin was in really good spirits at visiting last night having got a lot more feeling back in his right leg and assurance from his consultant that although his sight is still somewhat blurred, his eyes are starting to line up and he can follow movement equally. It really gave him a boost.
So why the setback? Today after physiotherapy Martin again had to ask to be washed as he'd been missed earlier. The ward sister responded by looking at his notes and demanded to know why his condition justified him being in a side room. Shortly after this another nurse told Martin that the senior staff has decided to move him out of his room to the main ward to enable them to deal with another patient who had an infection.
Whilst Martin is physically starting to make a reasonable degree of recovery, his emotional state is still very low. He became very upset at the prospect of moving onto the ward where most of the patients are elderly and suffering from varying degrees of strokes and other neurological conditions.
I guess we have all been aware that at some point there would be the necessity to move Martin from a single room, however, the whole situation could have been handled a lot better.
Perhaps it was because Martin became so upset that by the time afternoon visiting began the decision had been taken for him to stay put.
It's not necessarily the end of the situation however. The ward matron has emphasised that if the room was required, then a couple of days of Martin being 'down in the dumps' about being moved was acceptable.
Whilst we all fully understand the necessity for priority patients to take precedence for isolation rooms it did seem to present a real lack of understanding about Martins emotional condition which is really worrying.
In writing this blog I wanted to avoid any specific criticism of the care Martin has received during his time in hospital so far, however, todays events has left him extremely upset and with the prospect that he'll still have to move I think it's undone a lot of the progress he'd begun to show. With a more sensitive approach it could have been avoided.
It's difficult to know whether any of the distress caused today was a lack of experience in dealing with what is quite a rare condition or something more indicative of the treatment we might expect from the NHS reforms.
I know what I think: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/nhs-message-to-the-lords#petition
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