Saturday, 11 October 2008

Thoughts on the neurological recovery ward

Discharge to CICC today. I am very disappointed in the treatment Jo has received at the local Hospital. Despite a stated objective of encouraging self reliance, I have seen no evidence of that beyond dressing Jo in her “day” clothes. They still have her on a catheter; there has actually been less physiotherapy than in Cambridge, once the botched handover from Benfleet ward and the mismanagement of her pain control are taken into account. Even allowing for that the frequency has been three sessions a week, no more than Cambridge and that was a recovery ward.

The care here has wasted time covering the same ground, signally failing to confer with Cambridge, even after admitting they found what information they had from there was "confusing".

At the very least they should have had washing and dressing sessions every day, with Jo being reasonably self sufficient in these activities by now. Jo should have been off the catheter soon after admission, with her having progressed from bedpan to commode by now. This is particularly damning as the catheter is only still there as it makes life easier for the nurses and doesn't benefit Jo in any way. I shall be monitoring CICC very closely to ensure they are not equally lax.

First impressions of CICC are very good. I met Len, a brain stem stroke victim from the local hospital who has achieved walking within two weeks of being here and generally praised them. They do seem more focused on actually delivering effective therapy and making progress, where the local hospital was just token, or at best, exploratory, physiotherapy.

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Different strokes...

It has been nearly seven years since Jo suffered a "controlled" stroke whilst undergoing brain surgery to clip the blood vessel that had caused a subarachnoid haemorrhage in 2000. Sadly two successive coilings did not occlude the bleed and so Jo had a craniotomy in August 2008. During surgery the surgeon discovered the coiling had penetrated the rear of the aneurysm, occasioning emergency repair procedures. Consequentially they spent one and a half hours longer in surgery than expected, leading to the right half of Jo's brain forgetting it has to look after the left side of her world.