Friday, April 18, 2008

RED FLAGS

I’ve just had a call from Hamish, on Morag’s phone; he was almost made a widower because a junior doctor and young nurse put Morag on a fluid that she was seriously allergic to! (to which even) Why don’t they flag this stuff up in great red letters? She went into anaphylactic shock and has been back in intensive care and high dependency. This makes me sooooo mad. After Amazon’s brain haemorrhage and subsequent pregnancy, she had to relate the whole story at every ante-natal visit because they wanted to know why the elective caesarean? NOTES are there for a reason.

This was one of my visiting days – I always have a fit when he uses her phone to call me. I mean, you see the name come up and pick up with a, ‘Hello dear,’ but different voices make your stomach churn. A couple of years ago, I answered the phone to Louise and her daughter’s voice threw me. She told me that her mother had died from breast cancer. I hadn’t seen Louise for maybe six months because I was travelling round Devon, but she was fine. There was a vague memory that she was going for a test...but, dead in six months! My god.

I am constantly amazed at how the world changes when I’m not looking; I expect everyone and everything to continue on the same level, to stay the same. When I left Morag on Monday she was almost sprightly, moving around, going to the toilet, talking up a storm. She knows her own body and all the medication, which is great because she has to be on top of all the stuff new and strange staff don’t know; there have been quite a few occasions when she’s had to stop them offering her the wrong medication. If she had been asleep when they’d given her that fluid the other night she’d be dead. She made them stop the drip but it was already too late.

I spoke to her for a minute so I think she’s okay but she’ll be on my mind all weekend now.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Irene
That's really disturbing. I hope Morag recovers quickly from the blunder.
Jo

slippingthroughtheworld said...

yeah me too jo. because she's a long term patient she has experienced a LOT of these blunders, although this might be the worst. x