I wrote this last year:
The cobalt sky sieved the rain and drifted it gently into the quadrangle.
A stick thin girl, dressed in black, sat on a bench; legs crossed, her
head buried in her hands, deep in conversation on her iPhone. As she
looked up, her black hair parted.
Mascara ran down her ashen face. She mouthed 'Sorry' and was gone.
This secluded square, landscaped by Adam Reynolds
, is next to the medical wards and is where people come to whisper news
to anxious friends and family. It is the only place where a mobile
phone works.
I had my own bad news. The
consultant caring for Uncle Les had taken me and my small family, day
by day through the complex, chronological record of his stay. He showed
us test results, changes in drugs, therapies and medication. Les's frail
body was the battle ground where they'd fought a Hydra. Liver, heart
and kidney function, platelets, tiny levels of this and that measured
and brought into sharp focus by the incredible technology of modern
pathology.
Should we follow the Liverpool Care Pathway to a more peaceful place?
What else could we do? Les was exhausted and we were shattered. The
Consultant and his team were at their wits end. They had depleted their
armoury and pushed their knowledge to the absolute edge of
understanding.
I
stood in the rain and made the call to the one relative who couldn't be
at Les's bedside. We all agreed. It was our unhurried, independent,
decision based on an exquisite explanation of the facts in plain
language.
We let him go to his maker with our love. The Chaplain helped him on his way.
I
told the wonderful staff that it was important to our family that Les's
epitaph should be their heroic attempts to give him back to us. Les was
our loss but their success. They should be proud of what they do. #fabulousfrimleypark is a special place.
What
would we have done without the Liverpool Care Pathway? My Uncle has a
special place in my heart. He was a big influence in my life. I
hesitate to say this but; if he had to go, I'm pleased he went when he
did. For no good reasons obvious to me The Neuberger Review is abolishing the Liverpool Care Pathway. Waving two fingers at the Mare Curie Palliative Care Institute.
Neuberger's happy-band found; ".... it
was not the pathway itself but poor training and sometimes a lack of
compassion on the part of nursing staff that was to blame... junior
doctors were expected to make life-and-death decisions beyond their
competence after hours and weekends."
So,
do they recommend training in the Pathway, do they recommend trying to
find out why nurses suffer compassion fatigue, do they advise we look at
senior staff rostering? No. They dumped the Pathway.
Now we have more upheaval. 'End-of-life-care-plans' will be the new boxes to tick, along with 44 recommendations.
Who made the decision? Two
Lords, one Rabbi, a professor, a self-confessed 'amateur health policy
nerd', a King's Fund person, a Times columnist and someone who described
the LCP as "legalised euthanasia". Thank you.
The Report is
63 pages and contains no annex of submissions, evidence, testimony,
witness statements, analysis or proof. Just the opinion of the
great-eight who have gate-crashed the lives of people when they are at
their most vulnerable.
It
seems the great-eight have not the wit nor wisdom to think of raising
the standards of the worst to the average and the average to the best. NICE will now write the LCP again. Because idiots ignore traffic signs we don't tear down the signs. Because people can't follow a knitting pattern we don't ban jumpers.
In
the days before the LCP I stood at the bedside as the dawn painted a
cold, grey watercolour wash of day onto the curtain-less windows. All
day and all night I had counted the syncopated breaths as my frail
Father, exhausted by his struggle, let-go his hold on life. Each rise
and fall of his chest accompanied by the haunting sound of guardsmen
marching on gravel. A countdown to the end.
I wished then and do now; he had lived long enough to have had a better death on the way to Liverpool.
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