I got a telephone call this afternoon from the nursing home to say they had called an ambulance for my mum. She had been drowsy and hard to rouse so they had called her GP. He told them to send her to hospital - without even troubling himself to come out and see/assess her himself! As the nursing home isn't very far away I decided to go there first rather than straight to the hospital - the person on the phone wasn't someone I recall meeting and sounded about 12, she said herself that she was 'new' and I wanted to gauge the situation first. When I got there the ambulance was still there and it seemed obvious that there was no real choice other than to allow them to take mum to hospital. As mum seemed quite calm I decided to drive there rather than go in the ambulance, thereby avoiding a situation that has happened in the past where I have had trouble getting home afterwards.
When the ambulance arrived I was told mum had had a fit in the ambulance so they had had to stop. She was then taken into 'resusc' (sp?) which should have alarmed me, yet strangely didn't. I was told to wait outside resusc but then was moved to another area when an emergency was expected in that 'wasn't going to be pretty'. Eventually I went in and a little later mum had an x-ray which showed a chest infection. They are keeping her in for a day or two (hopefully it won't be more) and she is on iv antibiotics. The saving grace is that she is very sleepy and therefore not too bothered about what is going on.
The thing that is bugging me is - why on earth couldn't the GP come out to see her? Surely a chest infection would be relatively easy to diagnose and anti-biotics could be prescribed. I can't see that being in hospital will do her any good and it seems to me to be a waste of resources. I can't see that she will be looked after any better in hospital than she would be in the nursing home and she is probably a lot more prone to infections etc while she is in there.
On the plus side, she was seen very quickly in A and E and didn't have a long wait to be admitted to a ward. I told the doctor in A and E that she had dementia in case it wasn't in her records, but she told me it was and she was aware of it. I didn't stay on the ward for very long so we will have to wait and see how things are there.
When the ambulance arrived I was told mum had had a fit in the ambulance so they had had to stop. She was then taken into 'resusc' (sp?) which should have alarmed me, yet strangely didn't. I was told to wait outside resusc but then was moved to another area when an emergency was expected in that 'wasn't going to be pretty'. Eventually I went in and a little later mum had an x-ray which showed a chest infection. They are keeping her in for a day or two (hopefully it won't be more) and she is on iv antibiotics. The saving grace is that she is very sleepy and therefore not too bothered about what is going on.
The thing that is bugging me is - why on earth couldn't the GP come out to see her? Surely a chest infection would be relatively easy to diagnose and anti-biotics could be prescribed. I can't see that being in hospital will do her any good and it seems to me to be a waste of resources. I can't see that she will be looked after any better in hospital than she would be in the nursing home and she is probably a lot more prone to infections etc while she is in there.
On the plus side, she was seen very quickly in A and E and didn't have a long wait to be admitted to a ward. I told the doctor in A and E that she had dementia in case it wasn't in her records, but she told me it was and she was aware of it. I didn't stay on the ward for very long so we will have to wait and see how things are there.