Hi, you are “face to face with Shell”.
SHOULD YOU SPEAK AGAINST YOUR HEALTH PROFESSIONALS?
This has been hard for me to do and I put a lot of thought into it; whether in fact I would actually speak about what happened to me regarding a couple of my health professionals, and then I thought; “yeah, I should because it did happen and it may help others to speak up, if they feel that things are not right”.
I want to get the message out that it is ok to say that you are not happy with something that is happening to you or ask for it to be explained to you. It is your body and if it doesn’t feel right…say so.
You can always ask the opinion of other family members/friends to help you decide, if you are not too sure.
Most important, don’t stay silent…TALK ABOUT IT; to your health professional themselves, another care giver, family members, or friends. IT IS OK TO SPEAK UP!
Before I go any further, I want to say that I shall be forever grateful to the medical professionals who saved my life and who cared for me. I shall never forget that I am the way I am today because of them and I shall be forever grateful. I worked in the NHS for 30 years and I know that these people work very hard and I understand the pressures that they are under.
Please watch this video below and/or read on:
In this series though; I want to tell you a couple of stories where things just weren’t right…
My burn injury was quite extensive; fifty percent burns from first through to fourth degree burns. With any burn injury, especially a big one, my skin took a while to heal. After I was discharged from hospital the skin on my arms would still blister and some parts were very sore to touch. I had to be careful that no one bumped into me, hurting my arms but especially my hand, which was very painful for months and months, as I had fourth degree burns to my right hand and parts of my fingers were burned off. When my hand was first out of bandages, it was even sore to pick up a tissue.
Along with the pain was the itch, not quite sure what was worse, probably the itch, it drove me insane sometimes.
Please click on the link if you would like to view the page about “the itch”.
On top of all this, I had a District Nurse that came in every day to “help” myself and my mum and to be very honest, she was more of a hindrance than a help.
She would upset me nearly every day that she came in. She would bathe me and use quite a lot of towels, and would leave the bathroom very wet, it would look like the changing room of a swimming pool once she had finished.
She would then cream my face, sweeping the cream into my hair, making it all greasy again. There were occasions where my mum would have to wash my hair again after she left because there was so much cream in it, totally defeating the purpose of this nurse coming in.
I never understood why she never paid attention to the other areas that had to be creamed; mostly my arms and hands?
If I had a particular sore part on my arm, I would ask her to watch out for that area, as it was very painful. She would then take these long cotton buds and dip them in this red solution, which was used to help dry the blisters up and say: “Where, there” and “stab” the cotton bud right into it. This was obviously very painful and I would cry.
I know this solution needed to be applied but did it have to be done with such force?
This was no good at all. This person was here to help and all she ended up doing was cause me pain and upset, and then in turn, this upset my mum. We were going through enough as it was, we didn’t need anymore.
All this must have been so hard for my mum to stand back and watch.
Our only saving grace was that another District Nurse would come in from time to time, she was an Angel.
The situation could not go on like this. It did come to a head and my mum asked this particular nurse to leave one day. I think something should have been done a long time beforehand but my mum didn’t want to upset anyone and we had been given this service to help but enough was enough.
The nurse did leave but she then reported my mum, saying that my mum was not fit to look after me. Honestly….what???
Mum and I muddled through but it would have been great to have someone to help us instead of causing upset.
WHAT SHOULD WE HAVE DONE?
We probably should have spoken up more. Maybe asked for a change of District Nurse. We did tell the other “Angel” of a nurse that did come in but of course, she could not say anything but we maybe should have asked her advice on what could have been done to improve the situation.
I am sorry if you are going through something similar, it is hard to speak out but I hope that you have the strength to, if you feel that something is not right.
Stay strong and we’ll chat soon.