"Being in hospital on Stroke ward"

This story is being written up by the speech and language therapist for this person who, following a stroke, had speech impairment. She was, in hospital, much worse than she is now. She has not suffered any cognitive or memory difficulties but initially she was difficult to understand and sometimes needed time and also sometimes to show people what she meant. The hospital admission was in April 2020, she told me this in July 2020 after therapy. 

In the daytime the staff were lovely. At night they didn’t like me. They weren’t very nice to me because they couldn’t always understand me. One nurse, stood there with arms crossed and said What are you going on about?

I said the toilet isn’t very clean, can you help? I knew it wasn’t their fault. I’d gone to one that wasn’t clean, so I went to the next one and that was filthy too. It was so bad that I tried to clean it. I spoke to another staff member, a patient, and they said it was awful too. So, I called a nurse.

Then I had pain with cystitis – I’d had it before, I knew what it was. I went to the two doctors. They informed me they would get me two paracetamol. But that wasn’t what I needed but I couldn’t tell them. I took them and the pain was still there so they told me to gave two more!

I kept trying to tell them I was in pain, but they didn’t listen or try to understand what the pain was. The nurse told me to just lie down please, but I felt like I was being told off and I said I’d rather not, I’m in pain and they replied “You’ll do as you’re told”. So, I sat down and when they had gone, I stood up again because it hurt.

One time this nurse walked by and I said “Hello, could I…” and they just went by.

So all night I was in a wet bed. It was wet through. I was absolutely soaked. Three or four times I asked for help, but no-one came.

When I wanted to go to the toilet this nurse came and was fuming. I was frightened and they shouted at me. I’d got this cystitis and I had to go to the toilet and I got to where the toilet was and I was taken by the arm roughly to use the toilet. But the cystitis hurt so much I had to keep going to the toilet.  They put a card on the door, and told me that toilet was just for me (said in an aggressive tone of voice) but I didn’t understand. That nurse was on at the night time.

In the day I walked up to the nurses and I just sat and cried and I informed them I wanted to make a complaint.

A nurse came round and I was trying to tell her what happened. In the day the staff were so lovely.

If they said I had to go to hospital again I wouldn’t go. No.