I recently explained that my mother passed away on the 9th of September. But now I wanted to share details that may alarm some people.
So my mum had been receiving dialysis three times a week since being admitted into the hospital in Edinburgh, which was last spring. This was because she had a heart attack in March last year, then they discovered she had COPD and kidney failure.
Over the months, her health worsened, because of having strokes, and then seizures, and they were aware of her having an aneurysm in her abdomen. My sister claims this was because when you have a stroke, if it doesn't affect the brain, it apparently can occur somewhere else.
Towards the end of her life, mum visited a hospice for what she referred to as "respite." I'm not quite sure why she was going there. But she kind of initially liked it, as it's situated by the ocean. So while she was there in August, the staff had seemingly been hounding her about coming off dialysis and dying there. I'm not certain as to why they acted like that, unless they had detected the bulge in her stomach had increased in size and was close to rupturing. Then one day, she packed her belongings, left and came home.
Since I live elsewhere, I can only go off of what my sister was saying to me. She told me our mother looked very sad, was not really answering her properly or at all. It seems they had deliberately pulled out the catheters she had in place for her treatment, possibly leading to an infection, as her lines were fully exposed. She then had her dialysis delayed until the 29th of August due to this blunder. This may have allowed fluid to gather up in her lungs, or possibly worsen an already present condition. This is just speculation on my part, though.
So on the 4th of September, I came down to the house from my flat, as I needed to borrow money. I felt my sister was acting cranky and seemed stressed out about everything, and mum looked unwell on the couch in the sitting room. So I left.
A day later, nurses came to give mum pain relief, as is normal. However, not long thereafter, a different nurse from the hospice arrived and apparently inserted a needle into her other thigh. Then she gave mum more pain relief. And I don't know what drug they used, but she was definitely being prescribed fentanyl from a local chemist for to relieve the pain of the aortic bulge, which was causing her untold problems.
Then my sister said mum was not responsive on the 5th, so paramedics had to be called. They checked her blood and said it's been an overdose. So mum was admitted back into hospital. I went to see her, but she was frail, almost skeleton-like and not responding. She lay like that for days.
I happened to ask a male nurse if she could get dialysis if there was an improvement, and he lied by saying she could. He actually told me that. However, I went outside briefly to get a reception on my mobile. My sister said he told her mum wouldn't be getting dialysis again, and some red form was signed for by the hospice, effectively ending her dialysis altogether. Nobody had even agreed to that. And mum just kept telling us she assumed the fluid would be taken off at dialysis.
I wasn't keen on the staff in the hospice. I visited the premises with my sister in August, and my mum just used a pager attached to her wrist to ask for a nurse to bring her a cup of tea, and they got annoyed and took it off her. My mum kept wanting to go outside to the shelter as well to have a smoke, which annoyed them. She came back inside in a wheelchair, but soon wanted to go back out after the automatic doors were closed at night, to have another cigarette. Now in my opinion, that was a breach of the safety requirements in a sense. If my mum had suffered a seizure, she could have been set on fire if she dropped a lit one. The little shelter is not far from the main door, but nobody was there to watch over her after we had to leave to go get a bus up the road.
Mum previously signed an order not to be revived, but that was for a different matter. So I don't know what to think here, to be honest. But just before she passed away around 10:30 in the morning on the 9th, she made a loud gurgling noise and brought up a lot of red blood, or something that looked like pus. It looked watery, and they sucked it out. Then I happened to see a nurse putting something on her IV drip. Minutes later, the unthinkable happened. Mum was gone.
The funeral was held on the 27th with a small number of people present. Mostly just family members came that day. But some nurse had been at my family's house knocking on the door a lot, seemingly looking for a log sheet. My sister claims she added the drug she gave mum to the book, but did not state the quantity provided. This suggests some funny business has gone on. Legal action will be sought.
What do you think?
04 Oct 2023, 4:25 pm
