"Care of my mum"

My mum was admitted to Tye Green ward at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow , with abdominal pains, in 2018.

She developed C-diff infection and was isolated . She has bipolar disorder but was mentally ok at the start. As her carer, I can spot the early signs of mania and I warned the head nurse that I noticed she was changing mood and should be given her usual antipsychotic medication. Each day thereafter she was progressively a bit worse, and my mum was getting stressed from the C-diff infection, and as she has got good insight she told me she needed to see a Psychiatrist.. which was true.

Every day thereafter, I asked nurses at the nursing station about the Psychiatrist and they said they would get one.

On about day 4 from onset of bipolar symptoms, I asked a nurse to tell me what dose of medication was being dispensed. and the computer records showed the antipsychotic had been stopped completely...I could not believe it.

Whenever I visited the nursing station to voice concerns about my mum, they would ignore me as if I was invisible unless I interrupted whatever they were doing. The junior doctor who was dealing with the physical diagnosis of ulcerative colitis seemed appalled at my mum's mental deterioration. An extremely good doctor and when I mentioned that mum was not swallowing the antibiotics, made sure the nurses watched my mum swallow the antibiotics. Finally I said to the nurse, where is the Psychiatrist? How many Psychiatrists are there? They said they didn't know. Soon after a CPN arrived and they said a Psychiatrist is available only on a particular (e.g. Tuesday) day of the week. In one week., my mum had gone from mentally sane to regressed to a baby. She was in the bed, naked from waist down, open door so any passing visitor could have seen her. Water was out of reach.

When I arrived, she was extremely thirsty. She was so regressed she couldn't even hold the beaker to drink. The next day she was 50% better mentally because a Psychiatrist had visited her overnight.

Luckily my mum responds very quickly to her antipsychotic medication and she soon recovered and did not need to be admitted to the Mental Health Unit nearby.

Some of the nursing staff were good, but clearly not everyone. The junior doctor was particularly good.