Sick at Heart ; They're Brilliant at Fighting Disease but How Good Are Our Hospitals at the Human Touch? This Man Spent Five Years As a Patient and Was Dismayed by What He Sawgoodhealth

Summary

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THE hospital parking attendant was stonefaced as Colin Ludlow pleaded with him to remove the clamp on his car. He explained he'd been in a rush to pick up his wife Anna, who days before had been diagnosed with bowel cancer and had just had an MRI scan. Unable to find a space in the overflowing car park, Colin had parked in an unmarked area, and the official wasn't prepared to listen. For the previous ten days Colin had managed to keep a lid on his feelings both for Anna's sake and for their two young sons. But having to deal with the unsympathetic official who wouldn't release the car before Colin paid a Pounds 50 fine on top of all he was coping with, was simply too much.

'Tears pricked my eyes and I had to gulp back the urge to cry.' It's the sort of bureaucratic nonsense most of us would brush off. But, says Colin, the life of the chronically ill patient is dogged by these petty frustrations and humiliations from cancelled appointments and operations, and mindless red tape, to having to wait pathetically for something as banal as a urine bottle. Being a chronically ill patient in hospital is enough of an endurance test anyway without the extra and unnecessary burden these frustrations bring, he suggests. Colin speaks from first-hand experience. For by bizarre coincidence the day after his wife had her last treatment for bowel cancer, Colin himself was diagnosed with the disease.

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Sick at Heart ; They're Brilliant at Fighting Disease but How Good Are Our Hospitals at the Human Touch? This Man Spent Five Years As a Patient and Was Dismayed by What He Sawgoodhealth

A catastrophic chain of complications including MRSA, internal bleeding and pneumonia, resulted in him spending five months as an inpatient at the Royal Free Hospital, London; five years on he is still an outpatient. Colin, a TV producer, has now written a book about his experiences it is an account which will resonate with many NHS patients r...

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