Thanks for that Villan.

Your dad's story is the mirror of what happened to my dad four years ago.

At the age of eighty three he went in for a routine hip replacement. It was his second, he having worn out the one he got 20 years earlier, playing golf.

Four months and eleven infections later he came home, but I'm afraid he'll never play golf again, as he can't remember what it is. Sub standard care, and the attitude "Hey, he's 83, what d'you expect" have turned a bright, intelligent, active man into a vegetable.

The surgeons were wonderful, and intensive care superb, but lack of concern on the general ward, and the concept that old people are somehow less worthy of attention has destroyed not just his life but my mother's as well, and both of them are now just waiting to die.

My brother and I made formal complaint to the Primary Care Trust of Hillingdon hospital, backed up by the surgeon who replaced his hip.

Predictably the Trust replied with a letter of "apology"!!


"We are sorry that you feel that the level of care received by your father was inadequate".

Not sorry that it was inadequate, just that WE FELT IT WAS.

And Bastard Brown crows about the amount of money New Labour has put into the NHS.

You say you are angry, Villan. ME TOO, I'm bloody incandescent.

Don T.