Health secretary accused of U-turn on hospital cutbacks

 

Read the Guardian article here.

So were all the promises we were given before May just cheap electioneering ? Didn’t the politicians claim they wanted to get their integrity back after the expenses scandal? Closing the Whittington A&E  -despite promising to keep it open – is not going to help with this, is it?

To make matters worse  the next meeting of the North Central London NHS Board on 12th August will not be held in public. Why do you think that is?

How stupid they think we are? It is an absolute outrage and I will continue to monitor the situation and report back here.

New threat to the Whittington

The Defend the Whittington Hospital Coalition reports new threats to the Whittington. North Central London NHS have re-opened the possibility of closing the Accident and Emergency, Trauma, Pediatrics and Maternity Department at the Whittington Hospital.

I can’t believe it. We have been given repeated re-assurances that the Whittington would be spared – before AND after the election. Absolutely outrageous !

Protest at the Department of Health

TODAY @ 1 pm

Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London SW1A 2NS

Read the story in Ham&High here

All’s well that ends well

Thank you so much to everyone for reading my blog. And thank you for all your kind comments and e-mails.

There is only one thing I would like to say to everyone:

DON’T WORRY !

To my concerned friends:

The baby and me are fine now and are enjoying the sunshine. Life is great. I wouldn’t be blogging about it if I wouldn’t feel that I have come out at the other end – healthy, happy and well

To those who are currently pregnant or thinking of having children:

Just because it happened to me doesn’t mean it will happen to you. Indeed an experience like mine is unusual.  So don’t panic. But do prepare as much as you can before the birth. I would especially recommend breathing.  My antenatal yoga teacher always used to say: “You wouldn’t run a marathon without preparing for it properly – so why would you give birth without preparing for it ?” Very wise words in my opinion.

To those who have been through a similar ordeal as me:

Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences with me. It might sound strange but it really helped me to hear you talking about your birth experience. It really helps to keep things in perspective – after all: we’re all alive and have extremely cute babies 🙂

And to NHS North London bosses and other decision makers:

We told you so ! Local residents and parents have always argued that we need a local hospital with ALL the facilities in place and that this would save lives. And indeed it has saved my life. So in future I hope you’ll leave the Whittington well alone and people like me can get on with our lives and important tasks such as raising our children without having to worry wether or not our local A&E will still be there when we need it.

The crash

I open my eyes and it feels like I have landed in an episode of ER. I am laying flat on my back, have all kinds of things attached to me and there are about 20 faces starring at me.

I recognize my midwife among them. She asks my name. I tell her. Someone else asks me where I am and I tell him in the hospital. How come these guys don’t know my name surely it’s on the file. And we are clearly in a hospital.

I start to think that the whole thing is cool in a weird way as I have certainly never experienced anything like it before. All the 20 faces look quite concerned and are concentrating on attaching me to more strips and drips and monitors. I want to tell them to chill out, that I am perfectly fine and no need to make such a fuss about me. But instead I ask my midwife what happened. She tells me that I passed out.  The nice doctor from the night before is there again and asks me in my native language  if I know what happened and I tell her what the midwife told me. She nods.

At about this point the 20 faces around me seem to relax a bit and things feel less tense and more routine. At some point a consultant comes in and tells me that I have lost some blood but thinkgs are looking all right now. I still think that it’s an awful lot of fuss about loosing a bit of blood.

I feel ok. My partner, my mother and the baby appear again and I am pretty happy and start to make jokes. The 20 faces disappear one after another and I am left with my midwife and someone – don’t know who he is – who tells me that he doesn’t work on Labour ward.

I pick up that the 20 faces were the crash team who were called when I passed out.

My mother and my partner look quite shaky. I am not quite sure why. Days later they tell me that they really feared for my life. Apparently I went completely white and some people look like that when they die. I am still not 100 % convinced.

The day I finally realize what went on is a week later, the day after we have been discharged from hospital. My community midwife comes to  my house on a home visit. She has just read my notes in the morning and she seems quite concerned. We talk about my labour and at some point she cries a bit. And that’s when it really hits home. She is a brilliant professional with many, many years of experience. She doesn’t cry just because someone had a little difficult labour (at this point I still think that that’s what I had). So I ask her if you could actually die in situations like this and apparently you can.

But – hey – I didn’t !

So thank you very much again to my midwife, everyone at the Labour ward and the Whittington crash team for delivering my son AND saving my life.

I am so glad that I am still around to enjoy my son – he is simply fantastic.

And thank you very much to my brilliant community midwife for helping me to make sense of my experience and for the great after care.

THANK YOU ! THANK YOU ! THANK YOU !

My son

Apologies for the delay in blogging. I know that some of you have been regularly checking the blog for updates about the birth…and so far have been disappointed….but not anymore …I’m alive and blogging…..

My son was born on 22 May just before 5 am at the Whittington (yiipppehh !).

So that makes him three weeks old and one day today and as you would expect me to say: He is the cutest baby in the world. My partner and me are hopelessly in love with him.

As to the birth: I would love to say that it was a straight forward water birth but…eh….it wasn’t. The whole story will be too long to blog it in one post so I will break it down and blog it in little chapters over the next few days – for those of you who want to know the details.

For those of you who don’t need to know every detail ( I completely understand: I sometimes wish I would not know everything I know) all you need to know is this: The baby and I are well and thriving !

I will say two things with regards to this blog and the campaign to save the Whittington. At times it really felt as though fate told me: “So you think you are whittington mum? You ain’t seen anything yet !”

And indeed before the birth I hadn’t seen anything yet. All I had was a pretty box standard and relatively easy pregnancy and an excellent midwife looking after me. After the birth I can now well and truly declare myself to be whittington mum for two reasons:

1) You name the Whittington ward – I have been there: Birth Centre, Labour ward, post-natal ward, neo-natal unit and a couple of other places in the Whittington which aren’t “babies only”.

2) I can now honestly say that the Whittington indeed saved my life. More precisely the crash team from the A&E unit. So thank you very much, guys. Really very much obliged for saving my life. I truly appreciate the speed with which you “crashed in when I crashed out.”

So in a weird way I have proven my own point by my personal experience: You need a local hospital with ALL the facilities in place. A full labour ward plus A&E and other departments – if you do not have this people, like me, might end up paying with their lives.

But to my great joy the Whittington is safe, my baby is well and I am alive. So I hold it with Shakespeare on this one – All’s well that ends well.

Letter by the head of midwifery at the Whittington

The head of midwifery and the General Manager of the Women and Children’s Services at the Whittington have written an open letter.

Click here to read it.

It is of course very re-assuring to read.  I have heard rumours that some GP’s have advised women not to choose the Whittington to give birth as it might be closed soon.  Firstly, the Whittington is much safer now than it was just a few weeks ago and Secondly, there’s no chance that anything at the Whittington will close within 9 months. This campaign has always been for the long-term future of the Whittington.

I am still not clear if the North Central London Strategy Plan 2010 – 2014 has been revised or not. In theory it should be changed as it still lists four options under which the 24-hour A&E at the Whittington would be closed, which would very likely affect the maternity services.

I’l try to  find out and report back on this blog.

Lynne’s won !

While we don’t yet know what’s happening with our government there has been no change for us in Hornsey and Wood Green.

Our old MP is our new MP: Lynne Featherstone.

She has fought hard against the closure plans of the Whittington A&E and just a few days ago told me that “eternal vigilance” would be needed to ensure that the promises not to close the Whittington 24-hour A&E would be kept.

So once the dust has settled we’ll be looking to her to help monitor the situation and make sure that the Whittington is truly safe.

Just saw on BBC London news that Labour has won the Local Council election in Haringey.

I hope you’re voting today !

Just back from the polling station. I hope you’re voting, too.

People have actually e-mailed me to ask my advice on who to vote for. Just for the record: I’m not telling anyone how to vote – at least not in public 🙂

In terms of saving the Whittington A&E any of the four major parties will be fine as they have all promised to save it.

Quick reminder of who said what:

Conservative

Greens

Labour

Liberal Democrats

And yes – whoever gets elected: we’ll hold them to their promises !

In more general terms, all the parliamentary candidates for Hornsey and Wood Green, with the exception of one, have been living in the constituency for many years, which is always a good sign.

In terms of local elections: I hope you managed to scrutinize the candidates for your ward before making up your mind. I went to my local ward hustings, organised by my fabulous residents association, on Tuesday night. I was appalled by the poor quality of many of the local council candidates. Quite a number of them didn’t bother to show up. It was the only hustings for the ward they want to represent and they don’t show up two days before the election ? How often will we see them once they get elected then?

 Absolutely shocking.

Those who turned up put in a pretty poor performance on the panel – admittedly some were better than others but even the better ones said some pretty naive things. On the whole panel there was only one local candidate who was clearly more experienced, articulate, passionate and clued up about local issues than the rest of them.

I just hope whoever gets elected to represent our ward gets a grip and learns very, very quickly. We really need some intelligent, experienced and passionate people  to represent our diverse community.

Happy voting !

Why are the bureaucrats still patronizing us?

To all the bureaucrats out there: Get over it ! We’ve won the campaign to save the Whittington …so could you just STOP patronizing local people for once so we can enjoy our well deserved victory ? Thank you !

The bureaucrat who upset me just now wasn’t Rachel Tyndall or Richard Sumray for once – it was ex-Treasury official John Gieve speaking on Channel 4’s: Election Uncovered: What They Won’t Tell Us. The panel was discussing a future squeeze on the NHS and efficiency savings.  He said that:  “The only thing I have been canvassed on in the last weeks was the closure of one A&E ward in one hospital in North London, which has been reversed. The campaign has won.”

Could he be talking about the Whittington I wonder?

“But that is what in the health service could be efficiency savings, namely saving money in the hospital sector to make more available for new treatment in the community. But people feel very strongly about it. They see that as a cut in service.”

Dear John Gieve,

Firstly, the plans to close the Whittington A&E were not meant to be efficiency savings. I (and many other people, too) have been banging on about how there has been neither clinical evidence nor a business case for the closure of the Whittington A&E and Maternity. No one was able to make this case. If you can, please do. I’d be still very interested to find out how these ridiculous plans would have stacked up. If you can’t – well maybe you should stick to talking about things you can explain properly when speaking on national television.

Secondly, local people “see” the closure as cuts, because it would have been just that:  A cut to vital services the community needs.

If I had a big fat pension from years spent in the Treasury – I, like you, might also not bother finding out the details about health cuts in my local area because I could simply pay for private health care for me and my family if needed.

Well – guess what:  Most of us haven’t that sort of money and we are dependent on these vital services. That’s why we feel so strongly about it.

That doesn’t mean we’re dumb, that also doesn’t mean we are deluded about the extent of the deficit or the sacrifices that all of us will have to make. (Well, maybe not you, John. I am sure your big fat pension will be safe). It simply means that we want to be able to get to the A&E and time if we have an accident so we will still be alive when the economic downturn is over.

So until then – enjoy your big fat pension by all means – I’d just ask one thing of you: Don’t patronize us on national television !

And if you ever need the Whittington A&E before they provide Accident and Emergency Units on private health insurance…I promise I won’t bring it up then. I will simply wish you a swift recovery.

BBC London on Whittington Victory and next steps

There was a really good news item on BBC London news last night, covering the rally and the campaign victory. Unfortunately I can’t see it online anywhere.

But here is the link to an article on their website.

I am still over-joyed by yesterdays news and  last night even had a couple of non-alcoholic beers to celebrate. Ohh …these wild parties when you’re  nearly 38 weeks pregnant…

Some people have rightly warned that the situation after the election needs to be very carefully monitored and I agree.

It’s still unclear if there are policies already in place to undermine the financial viability of the Whittington and this needs to be investigated further.  Also we mustn’t forget that the Primary Care Trust and the North Central London NHS are unelected, unaccountable quangos who are impossible to scrutinize. We also now know that you can’t rely on the information they give out, such as their claim to have evidence, which turns out to be no evidence after all.

Just reading the BBC article: “An NHS London spokesman said “there are no plans” to downgrade A&E or maternity at the Whittington.”

Has this person read the North Central London Strategy Plan 2010 – 2014 ?

If not, how incompetent can a spokesperson be not to be aware of such an important document?

If yes, why is he/she lying ?

Or did he/she meant to say that the Strategy Plan has become obsolete? Why didn’t he/she make that clear then ? 

Anyway – you can see there is some more blogging to be done but I am definitely a lot more confident about the future of the Whittington then before. I’ll also continue to entertain you with my little pregnancy adventures as you guys seem to like them.

But for now I’ll get ready to enjoy the bank holiday weekend. I hope you do, too 🙂 Have fun !