Patient
“My mother (70) suffered a serious brain haemorrhage a year and a half ago. She was on holiday with her best friend, the ladies were going on a kind of thrift shop tour through the east of the Netherlands in the hope of stumbling upon some antique gems. It all went wrong just before breakfast. From one second to the next our lives were turned upside down. My mother, still alive and fit as a daisy, became a patient.
Terrified
She was in the hospital for nine weeks. We feared for her life. She was operated on numerous times and several of those operations were postponed to several times. Nervous, for her, but also for our family. She lay there not with an ingrown toenail, but with a bleeding brain. We’ve been terrified of losing her.
New drain
She also underwent surgery later in the process and even then we had to deal with waiting times and a delayed schedule. For example, she once went to the hospital for a new drain rather badly and twice had to stay sober for a whole day, until half past nine in the evening, in vain. Waiting for an operation that didn’t come. Get on it.
Moe
We saw her get worse that time, but we had every hope that the drain would provide the solution. When the surgery eventually went ahead, the much sought-after recovery failed to materialize. Had you waited too long? Nobody answers us. For almost a year now, my mother has been a shadow of the woman she once was. She spends her days on the couch, she can barely walk. She is also tired. So tired.
Inbetween
Two months ago it was found that there was again too much fluid in her brain chambers. We already felt that coming a bit and were somehow relieved; so there was a cause for her limited mobility and possibly also the fatigue. The call for surgery would not be long in coming, she was told. It was also only an intervention of half an hour, that was (and I quote) ‘fine somewhere in between’.”
Staff shortage
She was supposed to have surgery today. That ‘great somewhere in between’ turned out to be not so easy after all and even keeping to the planned schedule was impossible. Staff shortage. “Do you have a minute,” she introduced the phone call yesterday. I knew immediately what she was calling for. “The operation is not going ahead,” she continued, defeated. My heart broke. How many setbacks can one person take?
Pickles
We’re going to do something about it this afternoon. She comes here, then just lie on the couch with me, looking at our baby, her youngest grandchild. It’s so sad that you’d rather lie on an operating table with doctors messing around in your brain, but that’s what it is. Now she can hiccup again. Now she can hope for a quick call again. Now she can see her quality of life deteriorate even longer. And we may still be afraid of losing her.
Reward
Where are those structurally higher salaries? Why is nothing being done about the high absenteeism in this sector? Where is the reward for labor, working more than three days? Why is the chronic staff shortage in healthcare not being tackled and solved and why is the waiting list of 120,000 people waiting for surgery getting shorter? I don’t know.
My mother
For many people, the news about shortages and waiting lists is just a report in the newspaper. Or it’s some numbers, just numbers. For me it’s my mother. Until recently, a perfectly healthy woman in sneakers, walking with her dachshund or with a SUP board on the Vinkeveense Plassen, boundless in her love for the grandchildren, with whom she was always on the road. All she wants now is to be able to walk a little better and be a little less tired. Hospital, are you doing everything you can to help her quickly?”
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