"Hard working nurses who tried ..."

What I liked

Hard working nurses who tried hard under very difficult conditions to make the patients stay comfortable.

What could be improved

Quality of food. Working TV or radio. Being offered a cup of tea when left to wait in a grubby waiting room also used as a dumping ground for hospital equipment. A toilet with a seat on for visitors to use that was clean.

Anything else?

My mum has lung cancer. she had all of the tests to see if it was operable and was told it was and that she would need to loose most of her right lung. She stopped smoking and waited for her appointment to go for a lung function test schedueled for the 11th March. This week on the 23rd she got a phone call saying this test would be moved forward to the 6th March, then on the same day she got another phone call to say they were not doing the test but could she come in on Wednesday as they were going to go straight to the operation. On Wednesday after getting over the shock we took my mum in and she signed the consent form. She spoke to the aneathetist and had nill by mouth from 12 oclock. The next day I waited for the phone call to say she had come round from the operation, insead I got a phone call from my mum her surgeon had decided not to do the operation and now thought chemo to shrink the tumour was the best option. He told her all of this 2 hours before she was due to go down for surgery after they had marked her up for the operation. Why? I do not know the answer to this because, as yet, he has not had the decency to phone me. Yes my mum was a smoker and it had not been 4 weeks since she stopped but she never hid this fact, her other lung had performed well in earlier tests and they did not even see if she would be able to stand surgery by giving her a lung function test.

My father died on the 15th of January in his sleep very suddenly - he had not been ill and was a very active man. He died 2 days before my parents golden wedding anniversary. My mum had a possible diagnosis of cancer the week before this. Now a cancelled operation with no real explanation. I think my family have been through enough and I hope nobody else has to go through what I have been through today. I will be taking this matter further through all of the channels available. I wonder has this happended before and how did you cope with it