Australia's health system sucks.

My father has survived, we think, the removal of a tumour on his bladder, but still can’t urinate. The Albury Private Hospital wanted him out on Friday. But then found he couldn’t urinate, so they hooked him up to a colostomy bag and said we could take him, knowing full well, that because of his dementia, he has a past history of removing catheters and IV drips from himself – he has done it on three occasions. So if he came home and ripped the colostomy tube out, we would have had to rush him to hospital. We refused to take him until having some sort of nursing help available. My mum is depressed, he is depressed, I am feeling absolutely useless. I wish I could be there to help but I have a cold, which is getting worse, and I don’t want to give it to my father of mother. We still don’t know if the tumour was cancerous. We can’t access help from dementia organisations in Victoria until my father is shifted back into Victoria, so we are trying to get him shifted to one of the local hospitals, before accessing help and then finding out what we can do next. The health system is far too complicated, far too money orientated.


Comments

  1. Satima FlavellNovember 30, 2009 at 8:40 PM

    Hospitals, especially in the country, are sorely stressed. Governments, both state and federal, have their priorities all wrong. I hope you can get the right kind of help for your father, and soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousDecember 12, 2009 at 6:50 AM

    Hey are you a professional journalist? This article is very well written, as compared to most other blogs i saw today….
    anyhow thanks for the good read!

    ReplyDelete

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