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Last weekend after our trip to the dogs my brother in law was complaining of an odd lump on his finger. By sunday lunchtime it had swelled up somewhat so on the advise of NHS direct he went to the emergency doctor who gave him some antibiotics and told him not to worry about it.

Later that night his whole hand had swollen up badly so my sister took him up to the A&E at Maidstone hospital. The doctor there was rather horrified that he had been sent home earlier in the day and he was rapidly rushed to theatre where he ended up having a 3 hour operation that night to attempt to remove an abcess in his finger. Not great.

They keep him in so that they can keep pumping antibiotics into him. After a few days (this was thursday) they notice that the wound is rather smelly - nasty, dead flesh smelly. Consultant called who decides that to save his finger they need to operate now. Except half the staff are now on leave for the bank holiday weekend. Finally get time in theatre friday morning and another big op on his finger.

hFriday evening his blood sugar levels are going a bit mad (18 apparantly - dunno what scale or what that means but they were rather concerned) - he is diabetic but isnt allowed his own insulin jabs in the hospital. Ward sister keeps apologising but says she isn’t allowed to give him any insulin until a doctor prescribes it - and they are all busy…

Come saturday lunchtime - he has heard nothing about what happened in the operation so starts to kick up a fuss. Finally a doctor comes down to explain and tells him it is likely that he will lose the end of his finger and that they haven’t managed to get rid of the infection so it will continue to spread. That is why they are pumping him full of antibiotics. He then points out that that they are not actually giving him anything as no one has been along to give him another drip for 2 days now ( he is meant to be having 2 a day). Doctor looks through notes and mutters and then promises to sort that. 3 hours later they finally find some antibiotics and plumb him in.

Now the doctors are saying that as the infection has got into the bone there is little they can do and that he needs to go to a specialist centre at East Grinstead immediately. Great - can’t be any worse than Maidstone hospital except it turns out that East Grinstead has no beds (it later becomes clear that “no beds” actually means “not enough staff as it is bank holiday” but I guess the end result is the same) until Tuesday.

So currently, he is still stuck in Maidstone hospital knowing that he needs a specialist operation and then plastic surgery immediately but knowing he can’t as there is no where for him to go They are now searching for a suitable bed in London or even further afield - but don’t hold out all that much hope.

Sigh. Fingers crossed they manage to find somewhere…

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 26th, 2006 at 7:37 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.