"A heart attack in the early hours of Monday morning"

Called an ambulance at about 5:00am. Paramedics arrived within 10 minutes, bringing A&E to us, various equipment to diagnose & stabilise my husband’s condition:  a blocked artery requiring stent surgery. Clinicians  in a second ambulance alerted theatre at Basingstoke CCU & ensured a bed was available on the ward for afterwards.

The speed, efficiency & care of the paramedics and everyone at Basingstoke was superb: barely 3 hours from calling 999 to the Doctor coming to tell me the stent procedure had gone very well. My husband was on the ward by 10:00am.

He was discharged the next day at 5:30pm with 7 different medications.

The first week was very difficult as my husband was very poorly, which turned out to be due to the adverse effects of 2 of the medications.

We felt very isolated and scared especially as we couldn’t get through to anyone over the weekend. (GP closed)

But on Monday things improved dramatically when I was able to get hold of the the GP who referred us to the UCR Unit.  We had daily visits from the wonderful members of the team who were, every last one of them, so caring and reassuring. 2 of the nurses stood out. Donna was really adept in her questioning …trying to understand what sensations my husband was experiencing with the Bisoprolol and her care & attention dealing with the pressure sore was brilliant 

James’s questioning picked up on the pressure sore: with a specific question about buttocks.  We hadn’t thought to mention the lesion to the earlier question about any issues with your skin?” 

We cannot fault the care my husband received at this time: 

with one exception: we wish the UCR nurses had been available as soon as he came out of hospital. It was a very lonely & scary time

Thank you to everyone. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to all involved in this medical emergency.