dad went suddenly blind at 83: advice please on how to help him

[funnyperson]

I would really like help on where to go for advice on how to support my dad who went blind yesterday. He has been admitted to hospital, very ill, for septicemia which is improving with iv antibiotics but he suddenly lost all sight in one eye and most of the sight in the other yesterday morning. We managed to get the eye specialists to see him urgently they say he has vitreous haemmorhages.
What do we do when he gets home? How best to cope? What will he need? Who do we ask? Help, we are lost here and very sad for him.

No, but I bought a tumble dryer two years ago when dh came out of hospital and it is one of the best things I ever bought. The other one was a stairlift.

Oh, and I found out that AgeUK do a sitter service: 8 hours a month for free, which you don't have to take all at once.

It was all too much to hope for. The referrals for the home based equipment and carer and therapists didnt go off, the hospital thinking is that nothing will happen before Christmas. Dad is now refusing to drink because he thinks he will never get home and is beginning to slip into a coma. The fairly junior nursing staff dont really realise how ill he is and how fragile and how much it means to him to come home. They left him sitting in a chair without a cushion or pillow in pain for 7 hours today (he has both hips fractured) and wondered why he didn't want to drink. It is hopeless because we cannot possibly be there 24/7 to supervise the staff. Yet they cannot see that the best thing is get him home as quickly as possible before they kill him out of sheer neglect.

Urgently speak to your MP.

I agree with Dutch .

Is there any way you could manage him at home without whatever equipment was to be supplied ?
Thinking maybe you should just take him home ?

funny have PM'd you .

I'd be sitting in the ward office until they sorted it out, ringing PALS/MP etc if necessary. Its not acceptable to have this kind of delay.

Could your family afford to rent a suitable bed and hoist privately until it was sorted? From somewhere like this it looks like £100 a day, which is a lot, but would get him home fast

A cricket hoist is fabulous if he can he weight bear a tiny bit .
Much less scary for both person and carer ,small and easy to use .

OT recommended - she said they enable person to retain more muscle strength than the body hoists .
She said they are not standard items for SS and OT depts and have to be ordered in .
So people invariably end up with full hoist because they need them quickly and full hoists are in stock .

www.thiis.co.uk/new-products-cricket.aspx

Thanks all. Am trying to hold down a job so sitting in the ward isn't an option. I suspect this is all a ploy to avoid nhs/social services paying for the bed/mattress/care etc. You know the sort of ping pong - its not health, its social services, its not social services, its health, oh dont worry the hospital will sort it oh dont worry the GP will sort it etc etc etc.

I am strongly minded to ask the govt to refund my parents and my taxes and ni contributions as they would have paid for top class private care and follow up many many times over.

Apparently dad needs a rotunda which is better for standing but ot/physio say he cant have it because they havent got time cant be arsed to train the community physio to use it.

This was all so predictable, it is a fortnight since I first contacted social services and the OT to say that a bit of advance planning for going home would be good only to be fobbed off with them saying as they didn't have a discharge date there wasnt any point doing anything.

It is totally infuriating and I really don't know what to say any more. It should come under Continuing Health Care, as your dad has spent such a long time in hospital. The GP, through the district nurses should organise it.
As far as we were concerned social services did not come into it and we have never had any contact with them. So far.

Thinking of you and your dad funnyperson .

Hope all is well funnyperson

Drinks left out of reach on his blind side.
Catheter taken out then no urine bottle within reach or any buzzer then left in a pool of urine with a bedsore . Prostate medicine stopped.
Blood pressure medicine stopped. He was on it for years prescribed by a cardiologist at a world centre which happens to e local.Has now got high blood pressure. He has a headache. We are told by the nurse assistant that it doesnt matter if his blood pressure is high. This in spite of the fact that he will go into heart failure.
He is not given his toothbrush or toothpaste in the morning. It is on the bed table untouched. He now has severe oral thrush.
He says the nurses beat him up.
We cant afford £100 a day for the hospital bed and mattress he needs and which has been ordered for the 31st Dec.

Forgot to say that yesterday a drip went up because he 'wasnt drinking'
Drinks left on blind side.

CMOT dibbler that link was for stuff for very overweight people. Dad now weighs 53kg.

Nurses are having revenge because we complained.

awful awful awful.

Can you secretly film in the room? You can buy pens now with a camera in them. Not sure how long they run for.

I think the only recourse you have at this point in time is either the police or the papers. Will you have to work over Christmas? Can you 'camp out' a bit more?

Beyond dreadful . It's a scandal .

Complain again .
IME more likely to be bad nursing than revenge .

Drinks left beyond reach etc IME is the norm . Friends elderly mother was left on a partially inflated mattress all night . Own mother left on commode and told by nurse that she wouldn't help her off it ,it had to be the nurse who'd helped her on to it .Put on IV diueritics , no monitoring of fluid intake ,no drip ,given nothing to drink ,I could go on and on .

I feel saying this will only add to your pressure but I agree with camping out at hospital .
Or take him home without the provision of a bed .

Dad left in own urine. No urine bottle in sight. We were told that nurse had 'changed his pyjamas' . Nice, except that he was not wearing any pyjamas.

Came to find cheery assistant sitting on his blind side calling him a monkey feeding him gloopy Ensure. Dad sitting in own urine in tears all the while. Dietician had previously said no need to put gloop in Ensure. Thrush and blood pressure medicine still not prescribed. We were told that doctors were busy and medicine cant be prescribed till Monday.

At our request, sheets changed, clean pyjamas (which we had left on the top of the cabinet the previous day) put on, dad sat up in bed. In the end I put my foot down and asked them to call the doctor straight away to prescribe his medicine as I was very angry. Blood pressure medicine and thrush medicine arrived within minutes. Nurses go into office in a huddle to write up notes doubtless saying how bolshy I am.

All this is routine. Will be familiar to most who read this thread. Yes to iphone filming btw . Would have been very useful especially in ITU. We don't have an iphone though.

We plan to ask if we can take him home tomorrow. He can make do with a home bed till his hospital bed arrives after Christmas. The care package was put into place on Friday and the hoist has arrived which is the main thing. Wish us luck.

Oh, funnyperson, so and for you.

Is there email, so you can say: this is what we agreed at X date/time. Those buggers will be writing it all down, so you should. Possibly this thread constitutes a legal document. Bolshy is good.

I want to wish you merry Christmas, but will go for contented.

Thinking of you and your dear dad.

I am off work over Christmas so will be camping out whether with mum or in the hospital . Cheery if you see what I mean. Will be so much nicer to have him home surrounded by the family as all the DD DS are home from uni. We live a few minutes away so if he is home the plan is for me to stay with mum and dad at night and alternate meals at home/dads which thrills the grandchildren.
Watching the nurses go off to their families is making me grind my teeth. i never thought I would think their break was undeserved but I do. The permanent staff are taking the NHS for a ride. The ratio of nurses to patients is excellent but they spend a lot of time chatting, esp this time of year. I think I am undergoing a personality change.

Anyway the tree is up, the food is in, the house is clean, the laundry done. No cards done, no presents bought, no wreath on the door as yet but there is a warm bright home for the DS and DD to come back to, and for dad to come back to at mum's home. I am shattered but reasonably happy. Dad looks well and that is the main thing.

echt thank you . Any suggestions for indoor flowers at home this Christmas?
I'm not sure if this thread does constitute a legal document. Its only really for me to moan when things seem really too much and sometimes I haven't even put the worst stuff down because it is really too horrible. Like the time in ITU when he bled from his neck line for days so that he had to have a 4 unit blood transfusion and we would come in to find blood oozing down his neck through his dressing day and night. Eventually the consultant stitched it up. After we told him. The nurses has said not to worry for 5 days. Luckily it was on his blind and paralysed side so he didnt feel anything.
Or the time when his drip was down in ITU for over 48 hours and he was on a frusemide infusion through the central line and his tongue the size and texture of a chick pea and I rang 999 to say he was dying of thirst before they resited the drip. (doctors had previously been 'too busy')
Or the fact that when cross they press on his fractured leg to hurt him.

It is true. Sometimes I feel surreal and as if this cannot be happening in this day and age in the nhs which previously I had thought generally got things right. But the extent of the neglect and the extent of the cover ups and the extent of the crossness when one dares to remonstrate has been a real eye opener to me. One thing is obvious: Consultants haven't got the first idea of what really happens on a ward.