"Very worried about care of my mother QMC"

I have not had much experience with hospitals, but today I am leaving my mother on ward B3 (Acute Medical Unit) actually concerned for her safety....

My mother has been taken to the QMC via ambulance with suspected vasculitis (inflammation and bleeding of blood vessels, veins and arteries). The reason for her being admitted today was because she had been vomiting for over 12 hours, which began to happen every 15 minutes, could keep no fluids down, and started to vomit blood.

This in itself is quite worrying as vasculitis can cause bleeding of organs such as the stomach, she was obviously becoming dehydrated, and also, she is insulin dependent diabetic.

Upon arriving at the ward noone even looked at her. No smile, hello, or contact from anyone. No offer of water (that's clever for someone who's dehydrated!) or vomit bucket. When I asked for water I was met with what seemed to me as a bewildered and rather annoyed look from the nurse.

It took around 2 hours for someone to even approach my mother, who was in agony and being sick every 10 minutes. Her lips were dry, sugar levels high, and looked severely ill. She kept telling me she felt she was going to faint or have a fit.

To cut a long story short she was not seen by a doctor till around 2 and a half hours later. This was after repeatedly informing nurses that I am very worried that she is becoming dehydrated and after sharing my concerns with the doctor who had been making notes on the computer for at least an hour.

We have to leave as visiting hours came to an end. I can only hope and pray that the drip has been put in to rehydrate her.

three hours in my opinion is not good enough to get a dehydrated diabetic woman onto a drip. Prevention is better than cure. In my opinion a drip should have been the first thing to put her on, she could barely speak by the time we left due to sheer exhaustion and weakness.

I am writing this because I simply cannot sleep with worry. Are they testing her blood sugar? Who will help her sit up when she needs to vomit? Have they fitted drip? Is she even safe?

I would like to add that the doctor who handled the situation was very kind and professional when he did get to us. I just wish that priorities would be dealt with. What does is take to request that a nurse fit a drip? I think that once you know that patient is not going to get severely dehydrated, then you can go back to your notes. For goodness sake, notes dont die. But people do!