"Great care we received at Monklands Hospital"

My husband was diagnosed with mouth cancer, and saw the ENT consultant surgeon Mr Carton in September for explanation of the diagnosis and preliminary tests for his operation. He was admitted to Monklands in November and had his 12-hour surgery followed by two weeks in the ICU unit while he battled a lung infection. He was then transferred to Ward 9 for his recovery period, and was eventually discharged home in January 2016.

As you can see, this was a long and very fraught period. I cannot begin to praise Mr Carton and his staff enough. From the beginning, Mr Carton explained everything thoroughly, made it clear we could contact him at any time if we needed to. He introduced us to several staff members before his admission to hospital, and others came and introduced themselves prior to surgery.

The surgery went well, and Mr Carton did a cracking job, and he personally phoned me when the surgery was finished to let me know how it had gone.

I was totally impressed the whole way through the process. My husband's care on both wards was extraordinarily good, considering they are always busy. However, we never felt as if we were passed over, and we were actually in more danger of feeling like special snowflakes than feeling neglected in any way.

He has made a very good recovery, and thanks to Mr Carton's skill at removing all the cancer, he does not require any further treatment. Thanks to the unremitting care of the ICU staff, he recovered from the infection, and thanks to the nursing staff on Ward 9 and the physio, the dietician and speech therapy departments, he was sent home without his feeding tube, and is now having Fun With The Blender for his meals. Mr Carton will get him fitted for teeth in the future (as all his teeth had to be removed for the surgery) and hopefully he'll be almost as good as new, eventually.

Anyway, I just wanted to say a thank you to everybody involved in his care. It really could not have been better.