Fifteen years ago, my family’s life changed for ever when my father suffered a number of strokes. They left him half-paralysed, locked-in and unable to speak. He died in an overheated ward on a cold spring day. That morning, his skin was as pale as paper. His breath cracked. A nurse came in with clipboards, I asked her what was wrong with his breathing. “That’s just the sound they make when they die,” she said, not looking at me. My father went still. The nurse left.
My father was in hospital for 18 months. It felt to me as though the moment he was admitted to the geriatric ward he was forgotten, written off as dead already. He was in his mid-60s. Everything felt like a battle, from asking for clean sheets or for his ileostomy bag to be drained before it burst, to waiting days for someone to suction the phlegm off his chest or to find a wheelchair so that we might take him out for fresh air.
One morning I arrived to find a healthcare assistant trying to feed him despite the nil-by-mouth sign by his bed; he could have choked. There had been deadly outbreaks of MRSA at the time. I watched staff fiddling with his feeding tubes wearing old gloves they had used on other patients, feeling helpless and angry. He caught MRSA at least twice.
My dad came to England from Pakistan in the 1970s and was a GP. He loved his job. His patients loved him, stopping him in the supermarket as if he were a rock star. He was so proud of the NHS. He believed in it, considered it a great and fair institution. But all I saw was something broken which failed to keep him safe. I was 23 when my dad died. I knew nothing of private hospitals, but in my naive rage I reasoned that surely if you paid for it, at least you received some level of care. I remained suspicious of the NHS for a long time, grateful for a job that offered private healthcare insurance. My distrust deepened after my first labour when a procedure went wrong. It took a year for a consultant to explain what had happened and why.
Then this summer, my 18-month-old toddler woke up with a dangerously high fever, his body speckled. I panicked and got an Uber to a private A&E where he could be seen quickly. We were seen within minutes – that much I’d paid £100 for. But he needed admitting, and for that we had to go to my local hospital. The A&E doctor said they were expecting us. I blinked back tears, my fear amplified by my instinct that no one would care.
But at our local NHS hospital a team of paediatric doctors rushed around my son with urgent, serious efficiency that very slowly began to make me feel like my child was in safe hands. I crumbled when a kind doctor, a locum paediatrician, placed a hand on my arm and told me that though my son was very sick, she would do everything she could.
My little boy was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, a rare disease with odd symptoms that causes swelling of the blood vessels of the heart and is the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children. It was a frightening time but he was treated quickly and three days later he began to open his eyes. We were referred to Great Ormond Street hospital, where consultant after consultant examined my toddler with skill, gentleness, humanity. It was here, at GOSH, that my faith in the NHS began to be restored. I finally started to understand why people thought it was so good.
It astonishes me that somewhere like GOSH exists; that it is free blows my mind. Sadly, it is a rare example of a hospital that has received generous funds (in 2008, it received a £15m donation from Aditya Mittal, son of a billionaire steel magnate) even though it too needs more money. But what that proves is how amazing the NHS could be for everyone if only it had more funding, more staff and consistent resources.
The hospital in the West Midlands where my father was admitted was, like so many hospitals, seriously underfunded. After an inspection three years ago, it was placed in special measures and considered unsafe. Last year it finally received a multimillion-pound grant and its special measures status was removed.
I still think that older patients don’t always receive the care they deserve. Kindness and respect can go a long way even when the prognosis is poor. But I also now realise that the staff I considered careless and cold were overworked, underfunded and undervalued. My father was right – the NHS is one of the greatest institutions this country has. It just needs the same love and care as the patients if it is to survive.
• Huma Qureshi is a features writer
