" My husband could have been cared for better"

My husband had been into hospital for a while, he had been very ill and was having food through an NG tube. He then went into a nursing home, Meadow View for a while and eventually he was well enough to come home. He no longer uses the supplementary food as he is able to eat normally and has now put weight on. He had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and also Alzheimer’s and then realized several months after that he had been wrongly diagnosed, he had dementia. Many times when he was in Rotherham General hospital he was left in severe dehydration and the nursing care was very poor, they did not help him to eat and drink. We requested that they carry out tests to see if he was dehydrated and to check his blood pressure. The results said that he was severely dehydrated and they then started to look after him and changed his medication because his blood pressure was so high. Also he had bed sores because they did not help him to get out of bed. I kept asking them to help my husband to get out of bed, but on one occasion he tried and felt a little dizzy but this was because he had been in bed so long. The bed sores were really painful.

During his time at the nursing home, the bed sores cleared up and they looked after him but we did have a problem with finding a bed that had sides on it so that my husband did not fall out of bed. I complained about this and eventually a bed guard arrived a couple of weeks later. My husband is 6ft tall and all this time the bed was not correct with a proper cot side he had to stay with legs bent which has left him with his legs damaged as a result of this.

The food supplements were very beneficial when he was really ill, now he eats normally and does not need them. I think generally that my husband could have been cared for at the hospital and the home at a much higher level. Many times I felt that he was neglected and that my son and I had to keep stepping in to make sure that he was treated properly.