Prince Charles...

I am unbelieveably frustrated/outraged/disappointed with the level of health care at Prince Charles!

Today, Dad and I took the afternoon off work (and we really were too busy for that!) to go down to Brissie to visit Grandad Bull. We had the trailer on, so parking was a bit of an issue, as was the fact that the work truck was just too tall for the parking provided, but after a little bit of puzzling we worked out a different place to park.

...then started the drama...

Firstly, we couldnt find the enterance to Prince Charles (Prince Charles and Holy Spirit are right next to each other, and the signage is rubbish!), then we had trouble finding Grandad Bull's ward...

Then, once we'd found his ward, we asked at the nurses' station which bed he was in, and the woman there really gave us a hard time as to who we were, and what we were doing there...(and by this stage I was really starting to burr up!)... then she proceded to tell us that we had 'just missed him'. He'd been discharged WITHOUT ANYONE CONTACTING US!!! And, to make things worse, the nurses had packed him off in a taxi - sending him to a BUS STOP!!!! He is an old man, who has just suffered a heart attack, and they were seriously going to put him on public transport *ugh* and send him several hours away...WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE????

Suffice it to say I did not take the Christ-like attitude that I should have, but I just couldn't believe that this had happened! It was possibly a good thing that I was the one to give them a gob-full, cos if I hadn't, Dad certainly would have, and it wouldnt have been anywhere near as nicely put as how I said it!!

To top things off, the nurses (again claiming deniability) stated that although she had instructed the taxi driver to take him to Bus Stop 37 in Chermside, she had NO IDEA where that was exactly!! *GRRR* The only helpful thing they told us was that his bus wasnt to get to his stop for another half an hour...so now there's an old man, recently a heart-attack victim who has to sit at a bus stop for over half an hour - without his family being notified! What the???

Thank goodness for iPhones is all I can say! So I jumped on google and found an address and then plugged it in to the GPS. As we arent from Chermside (although we do know the area reasonably well) we had no idea if we would make it in time before Grandad got on the bus. It was a bit more than the 'usual' adrenaline rush that accompanies a drive with Dad, as we were RACING through traffic with the trailer!

Unfortunately, Google isnt all its cracked up to be - it thought we wanted to go to the bus 'station' at the Chermside Shopping Centre, but fortunately I spied Grandad Bull's spindly legs sticking out from the bottom of a bus stop along the way to the Shopping Centre :)

Dad braked 'briefly' as I jumped out (he was going to circle back to pick us up) whilst I ran over to the bus stop to see Grandad. This is the funny part:

As I poked my head around the corner of the bus stop I said to Grandad "Hello Little Lost Soul, would you like to come home with me?" At which point a lady walking past us gave me a VERY funny look! Topped off by Grandad's reply of: "Who are you?"...

...and my world stopped! I thought, Oh, NO! The nurse I talked to earlier in the week was right, he's lost his marbles and how do I convince this old man (My Grandad) to get in the car with me??...

So I tentatively said: "Its me Grandad (key word here peoples!), Rebecca"

And he said: "Oh, Rebecca - you've changed your hair!" :D Crisis averted!!

So after a quick stop at Cleavers (that Mum doesnt know about!), and a swap over of cars (Dad and Grandad took Michael's car home, and we took the truck and trailer) Grandad Bull was finally on his way safely home - oh, and I did some quick grocery shopping for him as he's been in hospital for a week, so probably things have gone off at home... :)

Im SO glad we found him! My opinion of hospitals have never been particularly high (thanks to the treatment that Grandad Stibbe got for the many years I lived with him) but this is really appalling to me - where's people's humanity?? To begin with, we werent even notified that he'd HAD a heart attack in the first place - he'd had it on Friday of LAST week, and the hospital finally called us on Wednesday morning of THIS week, and then this fiasco of this afternoon...seriously, what is the world coming to?