"Total mess. Surgery cancelled. Poor communication"

Hard to know where to start really, We were originally told to go to the ward reception at 06:00 on the morning of the operation, so we came up the day before, as it's a long drive to London, and waited for the go-ahead phone call. The phone call came through to my mobile, not my wife's as arranged, and was somewhat garbled, but they said come at 08:00 the next morning. Fine. So we booked a hotel and the next morning went to the hospital as arranged. We were greeted with 'Oh, we didn't expect you here', even though I had confirmed the arrangement. This was at 07:45, and bear in mind I had parked in the hospital car park, which charges an extortionate price. They took blood pressure and it was too high. So my wife was sent to a room to relax. Later on, they took another reading, but they were using a technique unfamiliar to me, but hey, they must know what they're doing. This carried on, with no information at all forthcoming, until about 16:00 when the anaesthetist cancelled the operation. After spending all day in a grotty side room, they only informed us at the last moment, and then only after a considerable amount of prompting. So back home in the rush hour, stressed, angry and confused, only to get home to a message on our landline, from 18:00 the previous evening, that there was a bed ready that my wife was supposed to have stayed in. This hadn't even been mentioned before, and accounts for why the reception staff didn't expect us. No attempt had been made to contact our mobile numbers, just 2 messages on the landline. Well, we obviously weren't there, as the hospital well knew. So I had incurred the massive cost of a hotel, all day parking, days off work, and a ton of stress, for absolutely nothing,

Angry doesn't begin to describe it. The part of the hospital we were in resembles a warehouse, with dirty pallets, buckets and skips in the corridors. An entire wing has nothing but about 5 coffee shops, a branch of M&S (I kid you not!), and has a feeling of chaos to it. What's more, the staff seem to relish the mess and chaos, rather than trying to do anything about it. I had been to a French hospital the week before and the difference in unbelievable. The French hospital is clean, quiet, professional. King's is just awful. I can't understand how it can be allowed to be like this and nobody says anything. Are our expectations of the NHS really so low?

This is not a place conducive to making people well. And this is supposed to be a leading hospital! I understand that surgery can be and is cancelled, but my wife's condition was known about and should have been prepared for. Again, poor communication. The whole process was stressful, ruinously expensive, time-wasting, and frustrating. We'll have to do it all again, and I am absolutely dreading it.