Five years ago, the NHS shut down. Does anyone else remember?

[Kennobi]

Because I do.

In fact I have several quite specific memories from that time. The time when we were all supposed to "stay the fuck at home", "protect our NHS" and read that fucking kitty O'Meara poem.

I shall share those memories with you here. Please add any similar.

1. My good work friend, a young man in his twenties, realised his flatmate had covid and was struggling to breathe. He dialled 999 and the operator talked him through how to find and use the nearest defibrillator, at the co op shop, half a mile from his house. No, they weren't sending an ambulance and yes he was required to activate a defibrillator, on remote instruction, for a woman who wasn't his wife, or sister, or child and as far as the NHS was concerned that was it, job done, they wouldn't be sending medics to an address where there was covid in case they caught it.

1. My cousin, a man in his fifties, caught covid. My auntie repeatedly rang for emergency assistance as his lips were turning blue, was told to monitor him each time, he died.

1. My best friend caught it, again struggling to breathe, they asked her can you breathe? No. Are your lips blue? Yes. Are you able to watch a TV programme for five minutes (ie basically are you conscious)? Yes. Ok fine you can maybe see a doctor tomorrow. Saw a GP in a car park, wearing a mask, who confirmed she wasn't dead, and sent her on her way. She now has long covid and it doesn't look like she'll ever get her life back.

It seems to me that at the time we most needed our health system it was unavailable to us.

Do others have similar stories?

I mean this with kindness - do you think you might have some unresolved trauma around the things you witnessed over lockdown and that the recent talk of it has brought these feelings back to the surface?

My dh was back at work the day after his mother died. He supported numerous colleagues as well as putting in horrendously long hours. I’m guessing you don’t work in tge nhs or anything healthcare related or have any understanding of what went on.

what you are saying makes absolutely no sense.

you don’t use a defib for shortness of breath, it’s used to restart your heart if you go into cardiac arrest. And if you do have occasion to use one, why on earth would it matter if you were married to the person or not?!

Your cousin couldn’t get an ambulance. The ambulance service was extremely stretched and people needed to take responsibility for making their own way to hospital if they had concerns. Did your cousin do that? We don’t have the capacity to take you to hospital is not the same as denying medical care.

There is no way to prevent long covid. It is simply how some people’s bodies react to the virus. It wouldn’t have mattered if your best friend had been booked into a presidential suite and cared for by Chris Whitty himself, it wouldn’t prevent long covid.

I'm sorry but this is horseshit. I've frequently in years gone by had to dial 999 for my son (severe asthma, anaphylaxis) and I couldn't tell you where the nearest defibrillator is because I've never been instructed to use it.

The ambulance service was extremely stretched and people needed to take responsibility for making their own way to hospital if they had concerns. Did your cousin do that?

My cousin died.

Sorry if you missed that information.

The NHS was UTTERLY overwhelmed. How DARE you suggest otherwise?

That is probably why the people you mentioned died, because they didn't have the capacity to support everyone.

It was drastically underfunded by the Tories and we are still paying the price now with long waiting lists (and I am on one because I didn't get the right treatment during Covid because the NHS was overwhelmed).

I am so sorry that people you know died in horrendous circumstances but it wasn't because the NHS couldn't be arsed. It was because they were overwhelmed. And people are now dying because they didn't want to worry the doctor or the NHS at the timeand their cancer/heart disease etc as gone beyond saving.

How can we forget about it? We’re still paying for it. Paying the price in more ways than one judging by some of the awful treatment people on this thread experienced with their loved ones not getting treatment.

I will never forgive the lies we were told and the devastation they caused.

Track and trace, what an expensive scam. Never again.

You don’t think people who worked for the NHS during that time were just doing their f-ing best? Not minimising your experiences but any perceived bad decisions were made by the people at the top. Not the people who were working in hospitals and putting themselves at risk.

You need to seek mental health support if it’s still bothering you this much.

I’m not talking horseshit - I worked as a dispatcher for a decade. You might not have been instructed to get one because of his age but there are certain triggers where you will be asked about a defib and told where the nearest is
That’s the entire point of them

We had 25 members of staff off sick with Covid at once on my ward (acute medical unit), A&E had it even worse, and ITU was just about at a legal staffing ratio.

I worked eleven nights in a row because we had no staff. We couldn’t afford to put ourselves at further risk as there would have been no staff left to care for the patients. I’m sorry your cousin died, but I think you are blaming the wrong people.

Did you work for the NHS during Covid OP? Out of interest.

Because I did.

It was overwhelmed. It’s still overwhelmed. And do you know who’s fault that is? The Tories!

1. My youngest DD as a newly qualified OT rotated onto the respiratory ward just as covid hit. It was a London hospital and we were scared for her. Her siblings and I took it in turns to send her a morale booster through the post every week, chocolate, bath bombs and bottles of wine.
2. In the meantime, as a college lecturer, I pivoted from FtF lessons to online and subsequently worked 24/7 throughout lockdown to make sure students didn’t miss out.

Great

Yes I can read, thanks. My point is that no available ambulances doesn’t mean the entire NHS is personally refusing to treat.

COVID isn’t like being struck by lightning - you aren’t fine one minute and dead the next - so there were opportunities to seek care rather than rely on an ambulance.

You clearly have no idea what it was actually like, and are determined to be angry without the slightest clue what the pressures on the health service actually were.

Op your posts are so uneducated

I think you make a valid point. I also remember the fact that not everyone was in the same storm - some had yachts, others boats, others a bit of wood. I was pregnant and gave birth during Covid and it completely shaped my experience of motherhood second time round. The care my daughter and I received was awful and traumatising. So yes - you are entirely entitled to feel let down and you have every right to talk about it. We were let down horrifically as double standards littered throughout our society shaping how covid impacted people’s lives. It was a traumatic period and some experienced more hardship than others, or were just not able to buffer the same, or didn’t have the same type of resources, and so the aftermath of this will play out for years to come.

im sorry for ur losses but to blame the nhs for shutting down and to claim they weren’t overwhelmed is wrong. Things had to change due to the high volume of people requiring care. NHS staff put themselves and their families in the firing line whilst caring for sick patients. All during a time when let’s be honest nobody knew what was happening and the fear of death was very real. imo it’s now that the nhs are not treating patients properly, there are some things that just cannot be diagnosed over the phone. People need to see a dr and that is getting harder. The nhs are certainly overstretched and I don’t know what the answer is but in this incidence I believe you are not only being u fair, you are wrong.

Thank you so much for all your hard work.

As a member of the general public I absolutely understand why the health service needs managers – and good ones.

Thank you to all your colleagues, clinical and others, too.

as someone who has a LONG history with Asthma, and severe breathing issues, being ignored because your lips are blue and you can't breathe isn't actually that rare a thing.

I have been turned away by my GP surgery (in the days of 'turn up at 8am if you want an appt) and been refused an appt because they're 'full' even though i was literally stood wheezing/coughing and showing signs of being cyanotic.

I had to take myself to a&e to get help.

It wasnt a 'covid special' of ignoring.

Yeah I'm angry that a bewildered 80 year old woman who had been schooled to believe that the health service she had paid into all her life would be there for her and her family, wasn't, as she held her dying son and listened to the chat from the operator about consciousness indicators, on her fourth call of the night to emergency services.

You bet I'm angry about that.

It was a pandemic with a virus never seen before - decisions were made that in hindsight could have been different and sadly many people died but that was due to the pandemic.

the only part to be truly angry about is the lies and the government parties - did the NHs make mistakes yes no doubt but it was accidental mistake and were harsh awful decisions made that had consequences - yes but again that was a result of the pandemic

CoVid shaped an awful lot of lives in different ways - holding onto that much anger isn’t healthy OP

And thank you to all on this thread who worked through to try to keep the show on the road.

Some of us do appreciate you.

They didn’t refuse to treat people. They prioritised who they could safely treat. Massive difference.

Yeah it was.

Maybe you had a shit GP in which case I'm sorry for that. But there are clear clinical guidelines on these matters.

Nearly 2000 NHS staff died of COVID they caught trying to help others. People moved out of their homes to save their families from bringing it home with them so they could look after others people’s families.

2 of my colleagues died. I sat and held people’s hands while they were dying and I didn’t see my husband or my disabled toddler face to face for 3 months to keep him safe while I did my job. What the actual fuck do you mean “Anything other than have an NHS worker exposed to covid, I guess.”?!