Hi, I haven't been writing on my blog for some time, partly because my mum died a really horrendous death at the hands of various professionals, and because I have tried all this time to get my voice heard above the deafening silence that pervades the corridors of complaint. I have fruitlessly pursued all avenues available to me and have had no success whatsoever. Quite the contrary: my attempts to gain some sort of retrospective justice for my mum has hit brick walls all around, with everyone from the police to the CQC and on to the Ombudsman. What a big surprise that is.


I have also been threatened to keep quiet, been obstructed by the issue of missing medical notes and had to hold onto my sense of rightfulness in the face of manifold lies from professionals. Absolutely no one in the Health Service, the Care Home where I put my mum for a second medical opinion when her own GP just shut down on her, or the police have had the decency or the courage to stand up and help me. Yes, I have had local politicians trying to help and various friends supporting me, but, you've guessed it, they have absolutely no power to exert over a system that slams down the shutters to protect neglect and abuse. Another huge surprise, yes?


Well, towards the end of my mum's life, I put her into respite care to get her access to another doctor.... or to try to do that, it might be more accurate to say. At that point all hell broke loose. I did not imagine that mum could be neglected and abused in just a few days in a Care Home with me going in there twice a day. But the level of abuse, neglect and medical negligence was astonishing. They accelerated her death and had her screaming to get away from them. They left her soaking in her bed,they fed her solid food which she couldn't swallow, they took four days to get a doctor to see her at all, inspite of her being delirious, but worst of all..... no, no, it's not the worst of it, I'll come to that later, the second worst thing of all was that they left her for a week with no medical treatment for what was an obvious UTI...... My mum. My lovely, innocent, adorable, naive, beautiful mum. My mum who had never, NEVER, done anything wrong in her whole life, ended up a completely powerless victim to professionals in her own home and then sustained massive abuse when I tried to get her help in respite care. And no one cares that she died a death in hell because of them. No one is interested.You see,no one wants to hurt professionals. It's a "given". The doors are shut.. and the only recourse open to me now is to go on TV. Imagine that. The only justice you can get in this shameful country is to go on television and tell the truth.


Lets talk soon, but please remember that there are many people here involved in this case, who did this to me and my mum, who don't want the truth to be told. Did you ever think that a cover-up requires collusion from professionals? You're right.... It is not JUST the perpetrators who are guilty in cases like this; it is the whole system that does everything it can, including threatening people like us, so that the truth gets hidden. Whenever you hear that something is supposedly being done to stop the cover-up-culture, don't believe it; it goes against human nature and basic group psychology to expect that abuse and neglect will be revealed and dealt with. Believe me. I know.

Will my mum come back to me?

I have been in hell this week.The oxymoron of pure hell.

My mum has continued to be demented with the inability to find words to speak, uttering gibberish, being discoordinated, weak, and agitated since last week.

As you know, she came off the pain patches last Thursday night after being rendered mentally and physically incapable.

The doctors and nurses have been desperately searching for reasons for the change in her condition... Well, reasons that don't blame the opiate drugs, of course. The main idea has been that she is dehydrated ! They have tried hard to fix, and have endorsed, this idea. The fact that she has a furry tongue tells them that she is dehydrated because a person can get candida when dehydrated! Of course, this notion excludes the fact that she drinks a lot of fluids and has had a furry tongue for some years. Hmmmmmmmm....... But they have to exclude the truth because then they'd have to look at the drug being to blame.

The other brilliant idea to explain what the drugs did to my mum has been that the cancer has affected her brain. Okay, right, let's have a laugh at this one as well by way of observing, following their logic, that the cancer has to have invaded her brain and taken away her faculties at exactly the same time as she took the first opiate!!!!Why? because she was absolutely mentally acute before she took the drug. Are you falling off your chair and splitting your sides? Well, I would be too if it weren't so serious.But it's okay, because to laugh is the way to survive and I want you to read this, laugh, learn and protect yourselves.

Of course, the first resort of a doctor in this kind of situation is to try to get out of his guilt, absolve the drug, and most doctors will do this at the expense of their patients. Human nature at work.

Okay, so what's the update? Look, I have to confess, I lost faith in the fact that my observations, being true and accurate, would result in my mum regaining her faculties, but slowly, last weekend her speech became less slurred, less forced and desperate,like a person straining out their last hopeless voice. I never believed the nurses, I was not that delusional even if I was despairing. In fact, the more they tried to prove their ridiculous ideas, the more I knew that they were just looking for something to disavail themselves of guilt, but it was hard to hang onto reality because I was afraid that my mum was dying and she would never regain her faculties. This state of mind is what rote practitioners give you with their negativity, their misguided diagnoses and their one track minds.

So where are we at? Today is Wednesday. I have had a hell of a few days... but slowly my mum began to make more sense today, answer me. Her walking is not quite so insane as it was. The agitation is less. .....

When I wrote before I didn't mention agitation did I? But last weekend I telephoned the hospice to ask if her symptoms could be agitation due to withdrawal from the drugs. "No", they said, because when you take opiates for pain they get taken up by the pain and don't become addictive. Oh, really?come on! So once again it can't be the drug and I am meant to believe them and NOT what I am observing with my own eyes? Madness. Look, let's get a grip: my mum has been clueless for a week, retarded, and she has suffered acute withdrawal after only a short time on these horrendous drugs. Fact. Full stop.

Tonight, at long last, she is regaining some of her senses. She spooned her oatibix herself with strength and good motor control and she has answered me coherently.It's a bit variable yet, but we'll see.

What is the wider lesson to learn from this? Well, never give up, for a start. Always trust your own observations and know that people you see in a bad state in the hospice or hospital may well be incoherent and incapable BECAUSE of the medication they are on. But nobody realises this fact. Only someone who knows how the person is usually knows that it is the drug changing the person, so please fight like hell for the ones you love.