"Sent home without pain relief"

My darling spouse has Alzheimer's and is at an aged care home. A few weeks ago, due to an immune dysfunction, their skin began to blister and they were taken to the Geraldton Regional Hospital. After a week in intensive care, and then a further two weeks in the wards my spouse was sent back to the home. It was a Friday, and they were not given any pain relief medicine, or a script, nothing at all. They are covered in blisters, from head to toe, the home doesn’t have a doctor, and could only try and contact the relief doctor, and the best the home could do is provide over the counter pain relief. When their whole body is covered in blisters, that type of pain relief is not enough.

After suffering in pain for two days, with staff at the aged care home trying to do everything they could to relieve the pain, they opted to return my spouse to the hospital. The doctor immediately ordered morphine, just so they could attend to the dead blistered skin. The doctor treating my wonderful spouse told me that they would send them back to the home, but they would give a script for Morphine patches to help with the pain. I was ok with that and left to go to the home to await their return. The ambulance arrived and when I asked about the pain relief was told by the paramedics that they had not been given any script at all, nor did they have any pain relief. I was ropeable! How could they send my spouse back to the home with nothing! The relief doctor told me that anyone else would be climbing the wall with the level of pain my spouse would be feeling! 

I know there is a shortage of beds, but you can’t do this to a person. They are already experiencing so much, they were a wonderful caring person, struck down too young with Alzheimer’s and now this, and to just not seem to follow up to ensure they have everything needed to alleviate the pain, I believe there is no excuse! I am so angry at the failure of the administration and system that has no apparent follow-up.

To be fair, I have no complaints at all for the care that my spouse received in the hospital. Everyone treating them were kind, concerned and very caring, they were wonderful, and I thank you so much for that. But I feel you have to follow up with this, you have to ensure that no patient should ever have to suffer like my spouse has. They can’t speak for themselves so we have to speak for them and we have to be extremely vigilant to their needs.

As I have said, the care we have received has been brilliant. But the aftercare, the follow-up, the lack of pain relief and scripts has meant that a wonderful person has had to experience unendurable pain, for, I believe, no reason other than a failure somewhere in the system. I feel this needs to be fixed immediately.