"Mum's notebook"

My mum who sadly passed away this year spent weeks in critical care with necrotising fasciitis and was incredibly lucky to survive after being given a 10% chance of survival. The staff on critical care were simply amazing and need some serious recognition for the work they do. My mum wrote in a notebook during her time in hospital and now things aren’t quite so raw I feel I need to share. She wrote about critical care - “I spent 50 days on the critical care unit until I was well enough to go to a ward. I was very poorly connected up to all sorts of machines but the doctors and nurses helped me through. They were professional and caring, they made me feel safe and cared for and explained everything. ”

Then she was moved to ward 10 to await transfer to Whiston hospital for skin grafts. This is what she wrote - “scary. They didn’t know what was wrong, didn’t know I had a fecal catheter, didn’t know I had my leg shaved down to the bone. Left in a tiny side room which said treatment room on the door so not an actual side room. Very seldom saw anyone. Pushed call button - more than 10 minutes before anyone came. Makes me feel nervous and unsafe. They don’t seem to know anything about me or why I am here. Only had one change of position all day from 3pm until now at 11pm and still waiting for another. No fresher up round catheters or pad change. ”

“Nurse rude would not listen when I told them my tablets had been sent up with me. They told me to stop complaining which I wasn’t anyway. Just trying to tell them the other nurse with the drugs trolley had them earlier but I could not get a word in. All my tablets were brought up from critical care. They were speaking to me like I was worthless, like they could take out her spite on me for some reason. The nurse turned the lights out at this point so I couldn’t finish this. They subjected me to a non stop outburst. ”

We as her family are left with the knowledge that this is how she spent her final weeks. This is just some of the awful things she had to deal with from some staff members. I am absolutely appalled. We were there every day twice a day. And while there were some amazing staff there were some that didn’t have a caring bone in their body.