Pressure point: The volcano erupts

Originally I had planned to do a light hearted piece today with nice pictures of Vicki with her new laptop. However, yesterday's events have left me so angry that I've decided to change tack. As an NHS employee myself, I'm painfully aware of the fantastic job the staff do, in trying conditions, on limited pay. No matter what you read or hear from the politicians there is not enough money going to the front line. I don't to want sound like I'm getting on my political high horse, but I mention it, to put into context what I am about to tell you, and to convey the sense that despite what I have just said, and completely contrary to my loyalty to the NHS, Vicki was completely, totally, and utterly let down by those very NHS front line medical staff.

Yesterday started so well, as reported in my entry of yesterday. From Vicki's point of view, I'm sure you'd appreciate that she is suffering enough. Yesterday was a catalogue of failures by the day staff on the ward, but I'm only going to highlight the worst one on here. At lunchtime, I popped out into town for my lunch. Whilst I was gone, Vicki needed to use the toilet. She's very weak, and confined to her cubicle so she needed to call the nurse for help. Then, inexplicably, the nurse left her. Vicki being a strong, independent girl wasn't phased by this, and got up off the toilet, but lost her balance, fell, and ripped out her femoral line. Naturally this really hurt and she screamed which thankfully got the attention of the nurses as she was nowhere near the emergency cord. I got back to the ward just as they had dealt with the immediate aftermath of the situation.

So now Vicki's faced with a real personal trauma. She has a fear of needles, and of course she realised that she'd need a cannula inserted somewhere, and of course would now face further surgery to have a new central line fitted. Both scary thoughts for her to deal with. Every time I've seen her face a needle of some description it's always the terror of what is going to happen that I have to deal with, holding her, comforting her, helping her through this unfortunate but necessary event. To top this, they wanted to cannularise her in the foot, and she was particularly spooked out by this. The first attempt failed. I had to step in and tell them to stop and give her a break as she was so traumatised. A second attempt followed, this time in the ankle and this too failed. Once again, and I had to intervene to give her some time to recover from the fear. The pain she was in and the doctor fiddled around with the needle still haunts me. A third attempt, this time in the hand, failed once again, and yes, I had to tell them to stop. The forth attempt was extremely hard, as she'd only had 10 minutes to recover from the last attempt and the staff refused to give her any more time. To add to her anxiety, they now wanted to insert the cannula in her right arm, where she has a bad eczema rash, she protested but the doctor ignored her and carried on regardless. Whilst initially this looked to be working, and provided enough blood for the pathology lab to test, when flushing the cannula it was clear it too had failed. Off the medical staff went to discuss how to proceed.

Only having one working cannula, they didn't have enough entry points for the drugs Vicki needed. When the nurse came back into the room, she told us they wanted to inject Vicki with a device under her skin to control her pain. This being a needle, and four failed needle attempts being fresh in her mind, she couldn't face another one, and I had to demand that another way was found. I pleaded with the nurse to give her pain relief orally. She didn't think that this was a good idea. I firmly demanded that they search for another route for the medication. It was agreed, they could give her morphine orally, and bless Vicki, hard though this was, she swallowed the tablets.

That should have been the end of the trauma but when her blood products arrived the nurses couldn't get the one remaining cannula to work. Repeated attempts by the now evening shift staff failed and thankfully for Vicki's stress levels, they gave up. She's now on the emergency list for a new line toady, but this also means that they have no idea when she'll be able to go down to theatre. The last time this happened they kept her nil by mouth all day and didn't take her down to theatre until early evening. So all in all, the poor kids been suffering, and I mean really suffering. On a scale of 1 to 10, she suffering about 10,000. I thought I was already on the edge of the mental precipice, now I think the ground below my feet is slowly eroding. And just to remind you, my GP says I'm OK!

I thought I'd had enough to deal with today, but on top of this, and while all this was going on, I've had to deal with the gossip and Chinese whispers of her peer group who clearly are not equipped with the social skills and intelligence to realise that we all need to pull together to help Vicki. Instead of this, I was faced with one 'friend' cross examining me, "what I have said about her". Yeah like I needed that. For Christ sake you lot GROW UP. Let me make one thing crystal clear to everyone of her age. Vicki is SERIOUSLY ill, and doesn't need you all fighting and blaming each other, or me, for whatever it is we've all supposed to have done. She needs to see ALL her friends, and all her friends are welcome to visit, but because of the numbers, we have to manage it. Vicki decides who comes and when, and she has NEVER said anyone CAN'T visit. The only time her mum and I said no-one could visit was when she was in Intensive Care (and actually that was the hospitals rules not ours, even her brother couldn't visit then).

So for her sake and mine, put up and shut up.