York Disability Week retweetledi
Today I discovered what happens when you’re too disabled to fit the system, but not disabled in quite the right way.
I learned that the NHS doesn’t always fail because people don’t care, it fails because the system is so obsessed with ticking boxes that it forgets there’s an actual human being standing in front of it. Or in my case… lying down.
After six days in hospital with a sepsis infection and an adrenal crisis, I was finally able to be discharged.
Patient Transport was called, but to my absolute shock, they refused to take me home because I have occasionally had access to a vehicle when a carer is available to drive.
TODAY, I have neither.
No vehicle. No carer. No family who can drive it, No friends available…. AND a specialist tilted wheelchair that won’t fit into even an accessible cab. Black cabs? NOPE. Still don’t fit. No room to manoeuvre into a rear face position… and cabbies simply won’t pick me up. safety first.
I explained that to the ward manager.
Then explained it again.
And again.
Each time I was met with the same question:
“Can’t you get someone to collect you?”
No.
The solution was, to discharge me anyway, knowing I don’t have any means to get home.
None.
And so, I was taken down to the discharge lounge… the lounge which is available for patients waiting for Patient Transport.
The very Patient Transport I’d already been told wasn’t available today as there’s ZERO capacity and a backlog of days worth of patients trying to get home.
I asked the obvious… “What happens when the lounge closes, and I still have no way of getting home?”
“Someone will deal with that then.”
No plan.
No solution.
Just… computer says no…
Somewhere we’ve replaced compassion with flow charts, and clinical judgement with algorithms.
If you don’t fit neatly into the system’s boxes, the system doesn’t adapt. It simply decides that you are the problem. That’s exactly how I felt today. An awkward inconvenience.
I’m not a difficult patient.
I’m a disabled woman who doesn’t fit your spreadsheet.
There’s a difference!
To be continued….
#NHSCrisis #DisabilityAwareness #WillIGetHome #FeelingBloodyAwful #NHS #LiverpoolRoyalHospital
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