My poor mother died an undignified death at the side of a motorway after waiting 13 hours for an ambulance. Hang your head in shame Humza Yousaf
The tragic story of how the NHS crisis claimed the life of a devoted mum... and her heartbroken family’s message to the Health Secretary
THE stark words on my mother’s death certificate will forever spell out her undignified, and completely unnecessary, end. Place of death: ‘Near junction 5, northbound on the M74’. That she was in an ambulance at the time, blue lights flashing as it raced from Dumfries to Glasgow, a doctor and nurse by her side trying to keep her stable as she went into cardiac arrest, only adds to the overwhelming grief and pain.
For her journey to that point reflects the true extent of the crisis facing an overstretched NHS. It involves a 13 hour wait for another ambulance, desperate hours in which she patiently clung to hope that all was going to be well. But it wasn’t.
It is a journey – like countless other ‘silent victims’ of the pandemic – which began a year earlier and involved excessively long gaps between hospital appointments, as the healthcare system made the war against Covid-19 its priority and pushed thousands of patients needing fairly routine medical procedures into second place.
It is a journey that saw, like many others, their conditions worsen to become lifethreatening over the last 18 months as the NHS buckled under the backlog of those on waiting lists. It is one that involves a cancelled operation, many weeks of deteriorating health and culminated in her fateful wait for the ambulance that might have made the difference between life and death.
It is one that ends last Sunday, with an 85-mile mercy dash from Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, where she had been admitted three days before, to the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, in Clydebank, which had postponed her surgery and sent her home four weeks earlier to await a new date.
The heartbreaking story of my wonderful mother’s death should shame the Scottish Government – and health secretary Humza Yousaf. To her last breath, my mum believed she was about to finally get the surgery she had been promised – but at 3.50pm on 12 September, all hope died.
Despite the best efforts of the medics at her side, and a valiant attempt by the ambulance driver to divert to the nearest hospital, Hairmyres in East Kilbride, the battle was lost – near junction 5, northbound on the M74.
JUST a day earlier, I had listened as the head of the Scottish Ambulance Service apologised to patients over increased waiting times, not realising the impact it was about to have on my own family. Pauline Howie said staff were working under ‘unprecedented pressure’ in response to a ‘huge increase’ in Covid and non-Covid cases. And she urged the public to continue to support her staff who have been ‘working tirelessly for 18 months’, with ‘challenging times still lying ahead’.
I don’t think there are many members of the public who would disagree and few would point the finger of blame at an under-resourced service at breaking point.
But the sad reality is there is now a deadly postcode lottery at play across Scotland, which sees ‘lucky’ ones being attended to by paramedics within a short period of time, while others less fortunate face a wait of several hours or more.
Who could not have been left profoundly shocked last week by the tragedy of Gerard Brown, a husband and father-of-three from Glasgow, who died after waiting 40 hours for an ambulance, following a fall in his home?
Living in the rural South-west of Scotland, with just a couple of ambulances to cover a vast area, my once robust mum, Ethel Gray, 73, experienced the best and the worst of the service. Diagnosed nearly a year ago with a faulty heart valve and under the care of NHS Dumfries and Galloway, she was told she was likely to undergo open heart surgery at the Golden Jubilee around March.
But spring came and went, as did most of summer. Finally admitted in mid-August, having made the 92 mile journey herself to do so, she was in for only a few hours for pre-op tests when she was told a urinary tract infection had been detected and the procedure was being cancelled.
Yet follow-up tests, two days later at her local hospital, found no trace of a UTI.
By the beginning of this month, the deterioration in her health was marked. A mother-of-six and grandmother to 11, she had become a shadow of her former self, her skin taking on a grey hue as breathing became gradually more difficult and her failing heart caused her lungs to begin filling with fluid.
Just five days before she passed away, she made a last desperate bid to find some relief by visiting her GP and was told ‘nothing could be done’ and that surgery was the only answer. Deflated, she returned home, waiting in vain for a call or a letter from the consultant cardiologist at the Golden Jubilee.
Less than 48 hours later, the moment our family had dreaded for so long began with an excruciating burst of pain across her chest in the dawn light and a frantic call by her to the ambulance service for help as she suffered the first of a series of minor heart attacks. In what seemed like incredible luck at the time, given the harrowing tales of lengthy delays emerging around the country, paramedics arrived soon afterwards and whisked her the three-minute drive from her home, in Stranraer, Wigtownshire, to the local Galloway Community Hospital, where she was given oxygen to aid her breathing.
Perhaps if a decision had been taken at that point to transfer her north for her long-awaited surgery she may still be here today.
Instead, she spent most of that day, September 9, in Stranraer, waiting to be transferred by ambulance to the region’s main general hospital in Dumfries, 75 miles and a one-and-ahalf-hour journey away, to undergo more tests. No family were permitted to see her, presumably because of Covid restrictions.
I called her on her mobile at 6pm, startled to find she was still at the local hospital after arriving around 9am.
‘Are you scared?’ I asked her. Her voice muffled by the oxygen mask, she told me she was. More than 50 miles away at that point, I offered to drive there to get her and take her to Dumfries myself.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, reassuring me, and probably herself, ‘you’re not allowed and the ambulance will be here soon, I’m sure.’ Except it
Sad reality is there is now a deadly postcode lottery at play across Scotland
wasn’t. It finally arrived at 10.30pm, after a 13 hour wait.
Following her midnight admission to the Dumfries hospital, tests the next morning confirmed she had suffered a heart attack and, over the next two days, there would be similar frightening recurrences.
On her final day, around 2.30am and again at 6.30am, she called my step-dad, Jim, her husband of 48 years. An invalid himself, and she his main carer for a lengthy period, she told him she thought ‘this was it’. ‘I know I’m dying,’ she told him tearfully. ‘I know I’m not going to see you again and I’m scared.’ Unable to drive now because of multiple health problems, he listened heartbroken and helplessly trying to reassure her that she was going to be fine.
Then, in what seemed the supreme irony, sudden hope came from the Golden Jubilee, which was finally prepared to accept her as an emergency admission for surgery.
As hospital staff readied her for the journey, we were informed her heart was now in a much worse condition than previously thought and that it was proving difficult to stabilise her. Transporting her by air ambulance was no longer an option, so by road it would have to be – and it came with the proviso that if she went into further cardiac arrest, the doctor and nurse accompanying her may not be able to revive her.
Still, with renewed optimism and her blind faith in the NHS restored, she was lifted into the ambulance, believing – as did we all - that there was still a chance and that she might make it after all.
In the end, her fragile heart, overwhelmed by the battering it had experienced in recent days and weakened by months of missed opportunity, gave up just half an hour from their final destination.
Listening on the radio last Wednesday to Scotland’s health secretary Humza Yousaf urging people to ‘think twice’ before calling for an ambulance to ease pressure on the service, I felt the anger welling up inside me as he not only blamed the pandemic, but acknowledged that the increased pressure caused by the army of people now seeking help for more advanced diseases had not helped either. The perfect storm, he’s called it, warning we are in for an ‘extremely difficult winter’.
His comments – quite rightly branded ‘reckless’ – came in the wake of figures which showed call handlers are now dealing with 10,000 more 999 calls a month than last summer, with an average wait for an ambulance around six hours.
Bowing to the inevitable on Thursday at First Minister’s Questions, Nicola Sturgeon revealed a formal request was being made for military assistance to help tackle the crisis. Thankfully, soldiers are expected to be drafted in over the next few days to drive NHS ambulances and help ease the burden.
But we are in no doubt that delay after delay in my mother getting the medical help she needed – compounded by that 13 hour wait for an ambulance – cost her her life, and robbed me and my family of potentially many more years with her.
As a family we plan to seek a review of my mum’s care from both health boards, in the very slim hope that lessons can be learned. But for now, that can wait.
Tomorrow, as we lay her to rest, it will be a time for reflection of a life well-lived, not cut short by a system in desperate need of reform and where the public see poor returns on massive investment.
If I could, however, I would ask the health secretary a question which I’m sure is on the lips of many who have lost loved ones in the last 18 months to non-Covid conditions having been, like my mum, shunted from pillar to post by a health system creaking at the seams and no longer fit for purpose. Just what exactly are you going to do to prevent more people falling through the cracks and becoming the ‘hidden victims’ of this awful pandemic?
After all, as the person in charge of Scotland’s health budget now, Mr Yousaf, the buck stops with you. Maybe you should be the one to ‘think twice’ before pointing the finger of blame elsewhere.
You should hang your head in shame.