I've gone into complete panic mode. Verging on hibernation mode. Please help.

[JackieandJudy]

Dh is ill, and has been since just after we met. Over the years we've had so much to deal with, and I think it would be fair to say that I have dealt with most of it reasonably well (I'm generally ok at coping when things are going wrong, it's usually afterwards I have a bit of a wobble).

The situation is slightly different this time in that, instead of finding ourselves in the middle of an emergency, he has a planned operation coming up for next Monday. And I'm so bloody scared. The odds we have been given are not good. I can't stop thinking about Monday and am constantly doing the "what if ...?" thing. The elder dc know it's serious stuff coming up and are scared themselves, hence are looking to us for guidance and reassurance. I've tried but today I'm all out of trying and have locked myself in the bedroom. Smallest dc knows Dad has to go to hospital but is oblivious of the wider implications.

I'm shaking constantly. I keep crying at random moments (yes, that was me in Sainsbury's who cried when I dropped the apples!), I can't do this for another week. But I have to. I don't want to talk to rl friends as I will cry and I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me anyway.

But I'm happy to listen if any of you lovely ladies have any ways to help me get through this week, and possibly after.

JandJ's personal gin-based cocktail, which will be revealed in all it's glory at a later date, remains in the taste-testing stage - so far to great acclaim.

For those who are clinging on to the knot at the end of the rope, Pa is now under orders to produce liquid Hope on a Rope that will enable whiskey, gin, rum, and vodka drinkers to hang on in there. It's a tall order, not least because it's destined to be served in highball glasses but I have no doubt that, with a little help from Mr Martin, he'll come up with the goods.

In the meantime here's a slice of comfort food for all the family and who's gonna know if you've slipped a shot of Calvados or vodka into yours? This little number is called Apple Pie In A Glass:

Freeze a one litre carton of concentrated apple juice overnight or until it's lumpy and icy.

Put half the contents of the carton in a blender, add half litre of vanilla ice cream and a cup of milk.

Blend and serve in sundae or tall glasses with a sprinkling of cinnamon and caster sugar over the top.

All of us who are being blown hither and thither by the oft times fickle winds of fate may find some solace in today's thought:

You have a strategic plan; it's called doing things

Yup! Yup! Got it Izzy!

Mind you, I am still hanging on a knot on a rope next to JandJ.

I have put my 1 litre of apple juice in the freezer.... (runs back to look at recipe)...blender is at the ready....

... found vanilla icecream in the big freezer.... next!

Oh wait a minute... I have to go and look in my cupboards for cinnamon (I think I know where castor sugar is!)

Okay - I am at the ready!

Nope... I don't have sundae glasses

Can I use crystal wine glasses?

Phew! Stands by my bed waiting for the go-ahead.

Fine crystal, plastic beakers, chipped cups/mugs, flower vases, jugs, - if it holds liquid it can be used to advantage sw

So JandJ hope your strategic plan is helping you to keep things together, even if it's doing yet another load of washing just to keep busy (my distractor activity of choice...love the smell of line dried washing and in times of deep stress can even be found ironing!!!!).

!off to do more things and to remember and send prayers and hopes to you JandJ.

Hello. I hope you are ok J and J and starting to feel that fire in your belly. I hope your dh does go ahead with Bar school - I bet he'd be an excellent barrister (whereas my dh is more of a barista).

I have a legal battle to fight on behalf of ds1's girlfriend so I'm hoping to rise to the occasion. If you get me in 'purpose mode' after a 10k run I can be quite scary! Remember, we are all here if you want help writing that letter.

(imagines 10k run....shudders....well maybe back in the day!)

In church this morning (already done in NZ) listening to the choir singing "the Lord bless you and keep you". Thinking of you and yours JandJ and sending some Peace.

It's not because I object to the Olympics per se that I've opted out of London fool. We've been watching various events here that are of individual interest to us and we all got up early today to watch the tennis, which we'll be doing again tomorrow to cheer Feddy on for gold

Whiskey, gin, and vodka versions of Hope on a Rope are virtually in the glass bag and pa will endeavour to nail the rum version on the high seas in the next couple of days.

For those who want to get shaking as soon as the recipe rolls off the press, you'll require fresh oranges, lemons, orange juice and cranberry juice, a bunch of mint leaves, Maraschino cherries or fresh strawberries, and a bottle of dry sherry plus your favourite tipple. Grenadine will make it look real pretty but it's an optional extra.

And now for today's thought which seems to owe something to yesterday's:

I can't do this but I'm doing it

Goodness, that's quite some shopping list Izzy! Only just got the apple juice in the freezer and will be trying the Apple Pie later with. A slosh of Stone's ginger wine in it. I'll report back.

Can't help but think cocktail ingredients should be available on the supermarket websites orderable by cocktail name.

There are thousands of cocktail recipes and you could be in the supermarket all day, Homebird

Cocktail cupboard staples are jars of olives, silverskin onions, maraschino cherries and agnostura bitters, plus Worcestershire and Tabasco sauces and celery salt and tabe salt to add piquancy to the more savoury concoctions.

A slug of ginger wine should go very nicely with your apple pie but I would suggest you add it to the glass, pour the blender contents over, and stir with a straw or long spoon - you could layer it

Good morning JandJ. How are things going?

We are ahead of you with the cocktails. Most of us have tried the Apple Pie - delicious!

Hope things are okay in your household.

I have an Apple Pie with Stones (can't be bothered to find bottle again to find out whether it should be Stone's or Stones') Ginger Wine in it in front of me. It's not going to be there long! JandJ you have to try this version as well as the original option! Comfort in glass! Oo, just thought, Southern Comfort version. Who is going to try that one out?

Don't mean to drivel on. What I really mean is righteous anger about the failure of the system, sincere respect at your family's wonderful dynamic, and squidgy hug and hand hold at all that's going on. Thinking of you today and I'll be around for the night shift later on.

izzy do you mean apple juice from concentrate or concentrated apple juice?

Hardly drink these days, but am tempted to try this just to raise a glass to JandJ and her partner.

Hi J and J, hope you are having a reasonable weekend and not struggling too much. Hope the sun is shining where you are.

Hi fellow cocktail lovers! It's wonderful how positives can be found almost anywhere if you look hard enough, and apart from the inspiring thoughts for the day, you lot have brought wonderful cocktails into my life (not that I've tried any yet, but off to supermarket tomorrow)! My only worry is for poor izzy's df - I hope she's not working him too hard!

We had a lovely day yesterday celebrating ds3's 8th birthday, and now watching Federer/Murray with dh, ds1 and ds2 as I type. Thank you so much for all the prayers and thoughts, and can I say, there is plenty of room on this here rope for anyone who wants to climb aboard! I was serious about a mn party if all turns out well - I want to put faces to names and thank eveyone in person - but how would I organise it?!

We're feeling much calmer now after Wednesday/Thurday's debacle. We've been talking about whether or not to complain and still can't decide whether we should or not. Dh's opinion is that there's no point because we're not trying to achieve a particular outcome, ie, what's happened has happened, we've been given a new date to work towards and that's that. I think that, whereas there may be no change in our own personal circumstances, it might still be a good idea to have the ineptitude of the whole affair and the dismissive attitudes of the docs on record somewhere. I keep thinking of the scene between dh and the dc when we left to go in on Wednesday afternoon - it was heartbreaking, and now we will have to go through similar again in a couple of weeks. What do you lot think? I have to say that, in general, the NHS service we've been given has been amazing and would it seem a bit churlish that, on the one occasion things don't go our way, we shout about it? I just don't know.

Hope everyone's having a great Sunday (don't think Federer is just now!) and a happy healthy week to come.

Lovely to hear from you JandJ. You are sounding much more relaxed.

As DH is the Main Man here, perhaps his thoughts about letting things lie should be respected. I felt that if would be better to leave any thoughts of complaining until after his surgery anyway, when he is back home where he belongs. However, should things not go as smoothly as you need them to, when he is re-admitted, then thats when you really will need to start shouting. Im sure that won`t happen though, and just want to wish you all a peaceful couple of weeks now, to gather your strength. Your love will see you through, and I send my love and prayers too, to you all.

Thank you Forever, much appreciated. I think you're probably right about letting things lie for now, apart from anything else I don't think I have the mental clarity at the moment to compose a sensible letter. Let's see how things go gulp

Glad to hear that you are having some down time and that DC3 can now be happily sent into the 9th year of his/her life.

Sorry for Izzy that Roger couldn't pull it out of the bag today.( but not sorry for us )

As far as complaining goes.. I think you would need to know what you want to achieve by complaining...it won't affect your care as the letter would go to the complaints dept. and be met with a bland "we are looking into it letter" before it was actually live and properly sorted out. Would it change anything?Probably not...the original cancellation was because the NHS as a whole has insufficient beds (working at 95% occupancy is a joke!!), the second miss was because of a human error (missing you off an operating list)...no-one will hold their hand up to that one, the third ridiculousness is because of government target driven NHS cancellation agreements...ridiculous but not the trust's fault. Complaining would flag up the inefficiencies of the system and might be worth it from that POV.

lots and lots of love and continued thoughts and prayers

Thank you for that fool, you speak sense - would you, by any chance, be involved in the NHS? You sound very knowledgeable on such things.

You're right that nothing would be achieved for us, personally, and that's why dh thinks there's no point complaining. I just wondered if having something on record might conceivably add to future improvement in performance (not just from my letter obviously!) but weight of opinion etc.

Anyway, for now, we will leave it. I'm sure what we experienced last week is not uncommon and that many people will have had similarly disappointing experiences. Just have to chalk it up to one of those things, and hope that all goes to plan from now.

I do think it might be worth flagging up at a later date, probably the people in the hospital are fed up with inefficiencies too, and anything that feeds back to the commissioners (eventually) will be a help and support in fine-tuning/revising/improving the system.

JandJ yes..have some experience of NHS from inside and out!!
yes Silver I also think it can help the trust...but only targeted complaints get to be that helpful otherwise it just get's put down to waiting list problems and ignored.

JandJ, I have experience of auditing NHS which is why I suggested that you copy any letter of complaint to their auditing authority. Massaging results is an absolute 'No-No" and I would jump up and down very hard on any of my authorities who even attempted it.

My main line of audit is councils/education - same principle though. Targets are there to be achieved and not juggled! When you reported that the Administrator had admitted about 'meeting targets' I felt pretty gob-smacked. No NHS authority meets their patient targets by falsifying results and bringing in chronically sick patients a day before they need to be admitted.

But it is your real life - and your decision.

As an outsider, I still cannot see that you and your DH have ever had a satisfactory explanation for why the initial operation was cancelled (other than there were no beds available because of 'emergencies') Eh? I thought your DH was an emergency.... wasn't he told that this major operation needed to be done sooner rather than later .... and deferring was not an option?

And then to be given a 2nd date where, at the last minute, your DH was told that it was for tests only. How many more tests does he have to have? Did he have any new tests? He had 36 hours in hospital which were IMO unnecessary.

Are you sure that you spoke to the Consultant when DH was in hospital last time? It was very late at night when your DH actually met a doctor - could it have been a Registrar or even a Junior Doctor on the team? If so, then the Consultant needs to know what appalling bedside manners they are developing.

I'll get off my high horse now!

I am still praying for you, DH and your family. Stay strong!

I'm glad to see you're holding it together, JandJ. I hope to write further on the merits of a formal complaint in due course but, in the meantime, suffice it to say that I'm of a mind with fool.

FWIW, those of us in the Nutmeg State who were watching our box today are firmly of the vew that Mr FedEx gave his gold medal to the crybaby to shut him up and nothing/no-one is going to convince us otherwise. Other than in his dreams, the surly one will not surpass M. Roger's achievements in this lifetime

I've just found this thread this morning. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, but reading all this and marvelling at the strength and grace of J&J and everyone who has shared their stories here has put me right back in order!

J&J- Even if you don't feel up to a formal complaint, you could always put something on the 'Patient Voice UK' website. Most NHS trusts watch the site, respond and some even post to let you know when a change has been made as a result of your post. It's a public site, so anyone can read it, which puts a certain amount of pressure on them, and you can keep it anonymous if you wish ( no, I don't have shares in it, I'm just a GP who is very embarrassed by the lack of compassion on show from the NHS!)

Thinking of you and your family. X

Sorry, sleep deprivation has addled my brain! I meant 'Patient opinion', not 'patient voice'. The website is www.patientopinion.org.uk.

Hang on in there! And no way should your DH have to spend more time in hospital so that the management can massage their figures! I agree with everything SW has said, and I don't believe for a minute that this is outside of the consultant's control - it's up to him/her to determine the relative urgency of cases, so either they sort it out, or they need to take the time to explain to your DH why his case is not as urgent as you were originally told steam comes out of ears
If you're having no joy with calling the hospital, try involving your GP, express your concerns and ask if they'll find out what's happening - hospital Drs are sometimes happier to talk to the GP. It may not get the op date moved up, but they may be able to reassure you that the delay is not affecting his chances of pulling through.

Thinking of you and sending strength, love and