"The last few weeks of my cousin's life whilst in the City Hospital"

My bachelor cousin (of whom I was next of kin) over the past three and a half years had had several major operations for skin cancer on his head and neck. The most recent of these was last February.

The skill of the surgeons was outstanding and the care he received in the Burns Unit at the City Hospital was very good. Following two of the operations he had radiotherapy and the care he received from that department was also excellent.

In July of last year he was told that nothing more could be done and that he might live for a few months, possibly a year. A course of chemotherapy was recommended by his consultant. He had one session in August and following that became rather poorly.

Later in August he was admitted from his clinic into the City Hospital and from there on the care he received left a lot to be desired, especially for someone with terminal cancer. During the 4 weeks he was in hospital he was moved 3 times, the latter ward not even being an oncology ward - Harvey 2 - which I believe is a urology ward.

He had a deep cavity on his face which he had been having dressed at home on alternate days. I had to ask for this to be dressed as blood was seeping through the dressing. The nurse on that particular ward said "we don't really do wounds"!

He also had a stoma from a previous operation and again some of the staff didn't know how to deal with this. I was even asked to bring some dressings and stoma equipment from my cousin's home because they hadn't got the correct ones on the wards.

To cut a very long story short, following a battle with social services, my cousin was admitted to a care home in September, where he died five days later. During the course of all this I asked about hospice care but was told that because my cousin was in no pain and not on controlled drugs this was not available.

I hope you may be able to imagine how much stress this whole situation caused. It is a great shame that the excellent care given by the surgeons and radiotherapists in this instance was not supported by the hospital care at the end of my cousin's life. I am sorry not to have written this comment before now but we are in the harrowing position of having to deal with his house clearance now which is taking up a lot of time.

I would just like to say that in desperation during the course of all this I got in touch with the skin cancer specialist nurse Helen and the help we received from her was outstanding. She is a credit to the National Health - it is only a pity there aren't more like her!

The above is a resume of the events leading up to my cousin's death. Should you require more information I have everything written down on a day by day basis. I feel very strongly that someone needs to know of this very distressing experience.