To have told the lady off in the bed opposite; hospital stay

[Celticliving]

Hi All

I'm very poorly with asthma and lung infection at the moment and have been in hospital since Sunday.

The poor old lady opposite me has dementia and has been chanting/shouting very loudly the whole time I have been here. It's not bothered me at all, though obviously its difficult to rest - she can't help it though.

Another lady was admitted to the bed next to her yesterday morning. Since then, all she has done is shout "oh, shut up," "FFS" etc. She even asked the nurse how long she has to put up with 'that bloody screaming' for.

She's just walked past my bed, tutting and rolling her eyes.

I said "you know she can't help it right!". Reply; 'Whatever'.

I said "You know that might be you one day". Reply; I don't think so.

She's not even hiding these comments and the poor lady's family are looking pretty upset.

It's the great unsayable. I've said similar on here and in daily life before. Keeping eighty year olds alive to be bedridden for another five years is only possible with adequate social care. Having been in hospital a few years ago our bay had two severely demented patients who had no visitors, no quality of life and who drove the staff and patients around them literally to tears. A hospital ward was no place for them. They were medically fit for discharge, they just had nowhere to go. Meanwhile they added considerably to the stress and distress of the very sick people around them, and those caring for them.

This is NOT their fault. It is the fault of successive governments who have refused to plan adequately for an aging population. These people through no fault of their own are part of what is breaking the NHS. Their lives were terrible and terrifying. Hospital was a confusing, terrifying place for them to be. I will literally take my own life before becoming like them unless a more humane alternative is offered.

Edited for clarification.

This is exactly what happened to me a few years ago when I was in hospital.
After being kept awake too long, I was in a very deep sleep. I was woken up in the middle of the night by the woman in the bed opposite who had her face in mine. I was in such a deep sleep that I didn’t know what was happening. It is a wonder that she is still alive because I did Karate when I was younger and thought I was being attacked. I called for the nurse and asked them to put the sides on her bed up. They said no. When I said I was complaining they did.

It isn't killing them off though. It's keeping them alive with no quality of life. Making the decision to let my grandma die was horrible but it was the right thing to do and we should have done it sooner.

Agree with this. The lady obviously can't help it - but that doesn't make the screaming, in a setting where people are already uncomfortable, any less unsettling.

@Ap24 exactly, I get really incensed when people seem to take my caring as being heartless and I shouldn’t be in my job, we want people to get better of course we do but there is only so far that can go. People need to start being realistic about life and death. I often work with people who have strokes, the vast majority being treated are 70s/80s/90s, they will never be able to care for themselves again and are unlikely to make any meaningful recovery, tube fed, treated for reoccurrences and infections etc why?

I think this was a confusion with me and in those circumstances I just thought I would ask, as I’ve been found a side room for things like possible GI infections let alone dying in front of everyone. Please don’t get angry, I hold NHS staff in highest esteem but sometimes you do have to ask to get something to happen (like pressing your call button, which I’ve also done on multiple occasions for older patients who think that calling out nurse! Really quietly will actually summon an overworked nurse).
Re the pain control she went through phases of calling out for more pain relief but I could overhear the doctors and nurses telling her she was at the top limit for morphine. I’m guessing at some point the pain gets too much even for morphine.
No disrespect intended to the staff of the NHS who I have always found lovely and hardworking. I can also appreciate it’s a bit annoying to be asked if there’s a side room when you’re busy and there aren’t any resources but I wanted to try to do anything I could as I was in a large room full of eight people, one of whom was dying in pain and indignity and suffering and in public - there’s at BEST a paper curtain for when you’re using a commode let alone your last days - and the other seven of whom were pretty sick.

Yes, and one of the noisiest areas of all is often the night nurses' station.

Of course you can't. I've watched people die, slowly and horribly, of cancer and the hideously debilitating condition that is MND. As a result I'm ardently pro voluntary euthanasia.

The key word here, though, is 'voluntary', and voluntary requires sufficient mental competence (although, as I've recently discovered, the bar for this can be set very low).

As you say, you can't just leave people to die because they've grown to be old, infirm and consequently high maintenance. As for the post that the NHS is a victim of its own success, in my observation the opposite is true. It's crumbling at the seams and needs urgent reform - a reform that's highly unlikely to happen any time soon as it would be very electorally unpopular. IMO, people need to get their heads out of the sand on this point.

Hospitals are places to heal, not the auditorium for senile shrieking.

Suggest the shouter is moved. It’s not her fault but it sure as hell ain’t yours.

Sorry, but this really made me laugh as it's exactly the sort of thing my mother would do. She has dementia and was an in-patient last winter, so it actually could have been her too!

Being on a shared ward is a grim experience. One night of it when I gave birth was enough to really hope I’m not in that situation again any time soon. However, the patient is very unwell and can’t help it but there might be something the ward staff can do, even if it’s like provide earplugs. Even though the poor patient with dementia can’t help it, it doesn’t mean it’s not distressing to those around her. It’s a real lose-lose.

I hope you get well soon.

Several people have asked why dementia patients can’t be sedated/why it’s unethical to do so.

• One of the central tenets of FallSafe is not prescribing sedating medication unnecessarily. “To keep someone quiet” = unnecessary.
• The medications involved are far from benign, as per this 2019 paper in Current Geriatric Report & the Alzheimer’s Society
website’s list of side-effects from antipsychotics as used in dementia treatment.
• There is also the issue of consent - as discussed in this 2018 Washington Post article about Human Rights Watch’s report of the same year into How Nursing Homes in the United States Overmedicate People with Dementia.

This reminds me of the time my DD got sepsis when she was a baby.

Spent 3 weeks in hospital and one night she wouldn't stop crying. I was sobbing to the nurse as a) DD was in pain, but also b) she was disturbing others.
The nurse fixed me with the kind, steely glare that only nurses have, and said "If they are being disturbed then they are well enough to go home!" in the most forthright tone. It made me feel much better as I realised that all the patients were sleeping and it was just the parents being disturbed.

But it also made me realise that you don't go to hospital to get well anymore. You go to hospital to get stable enough to go home where you get well.

If they're well enough to moan, they're on the mend!

*edited as I realised I made it look like I thought the OP was moaning not the woman next to her. And you wnbu OP.

I’m sorry you went through that with your child but what you’ve said isn’t the case, I’m afraid.

I was quite seriously ill in hospital with sepsis from a rotting organ in my body and the patient who made tremendous noise at all times of the day and night and threw shoes at you in the middle of the night caused me untold distress. I most certainly wasn’t well enough to go home because I was able to moan about the disturbance.

My Dad had dementia. He died in 2022. It’s a really fucking annoying illness to have to deal with.

How many parents have you seen lose the rag at toddlers just being toddlers? They also can’t help it but no one bats an eye if a parent has had enough of a whinging toddler and speaks to them harshly/impatiently, because we’re all human.

This is a fair point and as someone who gets very nervous about eg whether my house has burned down or cat died while I’ve been in (I live with parents, not leaving the cat starving don’t worry) I actually get increasingly anxious about being discharged towards the end of my stays. I can see the nurse’s point in that I’ve had deep sleeps in A&E when it’s horribly bright and noisy and I’ve just been so ill and tired I can finally relax even though they’re calling the crash team with all the lights on.

My Dad was often given a mild sedative when he suffered with dementia. He would get incredibly distressed and anxious about minor things and also nothing at all! Often this can turn to violence. No a dementia patient shouldn’t be sedated to “shut them up” but if a patient is screaming (rather than the typical dementia muttering/repeating of thing) then chances are they are in distress.

Just because it doesn't bother you doesn't mean it wouldn't bother someone else and to be honest if I had to listen to the noise you are describing whilst in hospital I'd probably lose my rag too

The problem is, as our population ages, this is going to get worse.

Don't worry it's only the current elder generation who are living that long as they grew up in a different world than us.

I'm in my 50s and half my friends are already dead. I'd say we'll see the age of death crash by the time I'm a pensioner, if I make it. I don't envisage my own life at an absolute maximum will last longer than my parents who both passed, separately and long since divorced, aged 75.

Why would I live longer than them when my quality of life has been so much lower?

It is the fault of successive governments who have refused to plan adequately for an aging population.

Political parties think in electoral cycles. They blame the electorate's unwillingness to face reality about the costs of adequate health and social care for older | sicker populations with multimorbidities and complex care needs.

It was the blink of an eye before May's Dementia Tax (not a good name) was labelled Death Tax (even worse name) and then had to be walked back altogether.

The needs of an ageing population with more complex needs was forecasted decades ago but it's an election loser. We don't pay enough attention to public health, population health, and supporting the health of future generations. As the electorate, we share some responsibility for that.

Regarding 'the electorate' I have a problem with our current political system - do we even have any form of democracy any longer?

Or just a country that is so corrupted by the needs and influence of powerful global corporations and billionaire entities (who pay no taxes here) but to whom our politicians are kow towing??

IMO this madness broke out for real when Margaret Thatcher sold off council housing and declared 'no such thing as society' went on to facilitate the corrupt and frankly criminal Docklands Development... and it's never stopped since. We've seen the level of dishonesty and corruption involved in everything from 'cash for questions' (Neil Hamilton, Tory MP) all the way to attacking Iraq over zero WMC, to gentrification contracts, to HS2, to Grenfell Tower flammable cladding to Tories awarding their mates covid PPE contracts and fake nightingale hospitals. We have huge global chain stores closing down our high streets, swathes of empty new built millionaire tower blocks, powerful people lobbying on behalf of the biggest business names in the world and yet they don't put a single penny in the pot.

The only thing uniting most British people is the state of the NHS and that's not even mentioned by any political party (except boris and his lying bus). Why do we even bother to vote? I don't even feel like there's anyone I'm prepared to vote for. Do we even have a pretence of a democracy any more?

While ddad was terminally ill, but not yet on end of life care, he was recovering slowly and encountered several people in wards with dementia.

One disturbed and amused him in equal measures as he was either shouting and swearing, or (especially at visiting times) singing hymns in a beautiful voice. He understood that it was beyond the control of the man himself and grumbled to us, but didn't complain too much.

On another occasion he was in a small ward in a bed opposite a very unwell man who had dementia to the point that he needed guards up at the side of his bed AND a healthcare assistant sat at his side to stop him trying to climb out of bed. That was irritating, but understandable. The fact that the gent's hospital air mattress was broken and beeped every 45 seconds to alert people to the low pressure was immensely irritating to Dad as it happened all day and night and stopped him sleeping when he needed his rest. It was completely ignored by the medical staff (or they were not in a situation to get it sorted or replaced).

I understand what your saying, but in response to the part of "democracy" that is one of the corner stones of our political system but the issue is majority of the public have not studied the different issues in various details to come to a fully informed perspectives about various issues, so that when its oh we need x for x or we need to do x it seems the public just think oh thats doable or this is, without knowing the full details, then also when a good percentage just rely on newspapers then how can you have a true "democracy" if its the papers that are basically saying you need to vote x etc

Nurses in hospitals do seem to be shockingly poor. Hca's do all the obs, nurses do appear to spend at least 80% of their time at the desk with maybe 30% of that time doing paperwork, 30% laughing loudly and the rest outright ignoring patients buzzing or even standing in front of them so I do struggle to believe what a lot of nurses say.