"Worst hospital experience ever"

My husband is 76 yrs old and has had numerous TIA’s in the past, he had a stroke in September 2016. He also has other health problems including a metal heart valve. On Tuesday 14 November we were taken to Blackburn as he could not speak, or lift his left arm and leg..

The paramedics were brilliant, pity the same can’t be said for the staff in the resuscitation dept. A member of staff came in, did not say who they were, could have been a cleaner for all we knew, caught sight of their badge and they were a consultant stroke nurse. They bullied my husband trying to get him to keep his arm raised which he could not do, telling him to blow his cheeks out, which he also could not do. Eventually a Doctor came in, they also tried to get him to move his arm and leg which he still could not do. He was then sent for a CT scan and a chest X-ray.

When the results came back the stroke nurse said he had not had a stroke. When I asked what had caused this they said ‘We don’t know, although if he has a chest infection this could have caused it’!!!

Then a registrar arrived they talked to the wall at the back of my head, and asked if I had a photo of my husband so they could compare the droop of his mouth before and after, and that the effects he was having where the after effects of his stroke in 2016.

He could talk, walk and move his arm when he woke up that morning. I then said I had the impression that they thought there was nothing wrong with my husband, which they denied. They then went to look at the CT scan and X-ray, and said they would come back to do a detailed exam, we never saw them again. Ten minutes later we were moved out into a normal A&E cubicle. At approx 12.30 am the following morning my husband was finally found a bed, after having arrived at hospital at approx 3.30 pm.

The next morning, luckily his face and speech had come back to normal although his grip still hadn’t, and his left leg still felt heavy, he was told he could go home.

When I went to pick him up we were told that someone would ring to let us know how much Warfarin he had to take that night. We ended up ringing the ward to be told the amount of blood taken to check this was not enough so they couldn’t tell us. This was te

Gen two nights that he had no warfarin, and he was to,d to go back to Blackburn on Thursday to have his blood checked again.

As others have said, A£E looked like a war zone, there were patients on trolleys all over, and every cubicle was full. How the nursing staff cope I will never know.

This was the worst hospital experience ever. There was no compassion or dignity shown by the staff in resuscitation, god forbid he had been on his own.

Patients now have no choice of where they are taken when they are ill, RBGH was never built to carpet for the catchment area they now have. We assume he has had a TIA, as he had no chest infection, but we do not know,