Bud here has an article in this weeks Leinster Express about the health system. Apart from that article it is time that this kip of a hospital was closed down, defumigated, restaffed and reopened as a service of the quality that the people of Laois and surrounding counties deserve. If I had a second chance and had been less distracted by the trauma side I would have sued this kip and closed it years ago.
My father, in his sixties, went for an x-ray for cancer. They did not misread it. They lost it. They pretended they did not loose it and he was driven by taxi-minibus to Dublin by a bollox who told him that ihe was the driver and my dad was the patient and that he had the xray the surgeon he was going to meet required. The driver had forgotton it and after my dad was driven around the country, all hospitals in Dublin including the Mater and Dunlaoire, he was driven home at 7pm. As he said himself at the time, "I am nearlly dead from the hunger anyway because I was left sitting in the bus outside the hospitals and outside a pub while the driver had his lunch. By the time my dad got to meet the surgeon, Mr Shaw, one year later, it was too late and he died. Before he died he told everyone in our family "if you can walk, or even crawl and you arrive at Portlaoise Hospital, keep crawling on your hands and knees until you get to another county hospital.
Incidently, the driver was later sacked for leaving patients in the minibus while he was in a pub. That was much better fpor him than the fate he nearly met one day when he made a comment to me in St. Lukes Hospital about my Da!
Apart from mixing up two babies and sending them to the wrong homes, injecting an anesthetic wrongly and killing the patient, almost taking the leg off a wrong patient and other blunders I had two uncles that went into Portlaoise Hospital with tyhe same complaint, irregular heart beats. Both came out in coffins and both died from infection. The nurses cried, they knew what happened.
My mother went into Portlaoise and one day I was approached and told they could not operate because of the size of the tumour. Fair enough, except that up to that day we were never told she had a tumour or cancer despite being diagnosed for two years! My mother also died but not before I saw the disgrace thgat is Portlaoise Hospital for its dirt, innefficiency and third world service. I saw a patient one day with his drip lead (canulae) lying on the floor until a nurse who was otherwise engaged (talking to another) asked a cleaner who was pushing a mopping trolley down the corridor - "Hey, x, will you plug back in Mrs so and so's drip there" and while he was passing he did, dirty hands and all.
Five years ago, my brother had a severe stroke. Where? In the council offices within five minutes of the county hospital. The never attempted to give him a clot buster injection, no treatment at all. Into a bed and left him there until the following Tuesday and then drove him to Tullamore for a CT Scan because they have no scanner in Portlaoise, a hospital on the main railway link, main artery to Cork, Limerick and the west where a major accident of Buttevant proportions could occur at any time. After a month tyhey wanted my sister-in-law to sign an agreement to have him transferred to a nursing home in Mountmellick. They could do no more and he would not walk or talk again. We refused to sign and after a campaign in the Herald and on RTE I suceeded in getting him the treatment he required. Today, my brother walks and talks and drinks pints and lives a reasonably normal life, very reasonable compared to the hand he was being dealt from the kip that is Port;laoise hospital.
Mortar Monaghan of the Columbia Three is currently doing the rounds having his book signed. If I thought he had any of the rubbery stuff left over and if I could get my hands on it and have all patients and nurses and doctors at a safe distance I would gladly go to jail for giving Portlaoise Hospital the lift it now requires, that being, a lift oif about ten metres off the ground.
My father, in his sixties, went for an x-ray for cancer. They did not misread it. They lost it. They pretended they did not loose it and he was driven by taxi-minibus to Dublin by a bollox who told him that ihe was the driver and my dad was the patient and that he had the xray the surgeon he was going to meet required. The driver had forgotton it and after my dad was driven around the country, all hospitals in Dublin including the Mater and Dunlaoire, he was driven home at 7pm. As he said himself at the time, "I am nearlly dead from the hunger anyway because I was left sitting in the bus outside the hospitals and outside a pub while the driver had his lunch. By the time my dad got to meet the surgeon, Mr Shaw, one year later, it was too late and he died. Before he died he told everyone in our family "if you can walk, or even crawl and you arrive at Portlaoise Hospital, keep crawling on your hands and knees until you get to another county hospital.
Incidently, the driver was later sacked for leaving patients in the minibus while he was in a pub. That was much better fpor him than the fate he nearly met one day when he made a comment to me in St. Lukes Hospital about my Da!
Apart from mixing up two babies and sending them to the wrong homes, injecting an anesthetic wrongly and killing the patient, almost taking the leg off a wrong patient and other blunders I had two uncles that went into Portlaoise Hospital with tyhe same complaint, irregular heart beats. Both came out in coffins and both died from infection. The nurses cried, they knew what happened.
My mother went into Portlaoise and one day I was approached and told they could not operate because of the size of the tumour. Fair enough, except that up to that day we were never told she had a tumour or cancer despite being diagnosed for two years! My mother also died but not before I saw the disgrace thgat is Portlaoise Hospital for its dirt, innefficiency and third world service. I saw a patient one day with his drip lead (canulae) lying on the floor until a nurse who was otherwise engaged (talking to another) asked a cleaner who was pushing a mopping trolley down the corridor - "Hey, x, will you plug back in Mrs so and so's drip there" and while he was passing he did, dirty hands and all.
Five years ago, my brother had a severe stroke. Where? In the council offices within five minutes of the county hospital. The never attempted to give him a clot buster injection, no treatment at all. Into a bed and left him there until the following Tuesday and then drove him to Tullamore for a CT Scan because they have no scanner in Portlaoise, a hospital on the main railway link, main artery to Cork, Limerick and the west where a major accident of Buttevant proportions could occur at any time. After a month tyhey wanted my sister-in-law to sign an agreement to have him transferred to a nursing home in Mountmellick. They could do no more and he would not walk or talk again. We refused to sign and after a campaign in the Herald and on RTE I suceeded in getting him the treatment he required. Today, my brother walks and talks and drinks pints and lives a reasonably normal life, very reasonable compared to the hand he was being dealt from the kip that is Port;laoise hospital.
Mortar Monaghan of the Columbia Three is currently doing the rounds having his book signed. If I thought he had any of the rubbery stuff left over and if I could get my hands on it and have all patients and nurses and doctors at a safe distance I would gladly go to jail for giving Portlaoise Hospital the lift it now requires, that being, a lift oif about ten metres off the ground.
