Family fought for months to get second opinion for Isla as she battled MS and dementia

you are dealing with cancer.

“I was demanding the other scans but they refused. I asked in November, December, January, February, March and April.

“They gave her no treatment. They wanted to kick her to the kerb, they wanted her out of hospital. They pretty much wanted to leave her to die.

“But we refused to take her until the tests were done.”

Isla’s GP put in an urgent referral to NHS Lothian but doctors there agreed with the Fife diagnosis.

Martin said: “I do not blame them. They made their assessment from the NHS Fife report which misrepresented my mother’s medical status.”

Finally, after Martin said he might sue individual employees if anything happened to his mum, NHS Fife agreed to a proper bedside review by NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde.

Martin said: “The first thing they did was tell NHS Fife to do a CT scan – for exactly the reasons I had been screaming for them to do since November. Three weeks later, I got an email saying NHS Glasgow had put in a request to NHS Fife for a cystography. Half of me wanted to laugh and half of me wanted to cry – basically we had wasted six months.

“If these tests had been done at the start of December, mum would have been home and wouldn’t have had a hospital-acquired infection on Christmas Eve.”

Martin said Isla could walk when she went into hospital in October, but now could not. The family were having to modify her house so she could come home.

NHS Fife chief executive Paul Hawkins said: “NHS Fife is unable to discuss individual patients or their care. We do however constantly strive to provide the very best possible quality care to all patients.”