General Chat

OH went into hospital on Friday morning for a major operation; and, unbelievably, was discharged on Saturday afternoon.

He had been given literature outlining the various problems that might expect to encounter as a result of the operation.

During the next 30 hours he started to exhibit various symptoms that were most definitely not outlined in the literature, and he was re-admitted as an emergency on Sunday night. After the surgeons had opened him up to try and locate the source of the problem - septicemia - he was sent to intensive care and put under sedation for the next 24 hours.

He is now back in the main hospital fighting off the resulting chest infection.

We were totally unprepared for this, and thank God for NHS direct.

I'd be very interested to hear what you have to say about this,

Nowt I can say Fiona but I do hope your OH is on the mend soon x

Cause a stink where you can,if people keep quite these severe issue never come to light,!

hope all will be ok soon.

I hope he soon gets better Fiona.
I imagine that they put the most usual problems likely to occur and perhaps septicaemia is a very unusual one.
However, as you say, well done NHS Direct for sending him back to hospital.

Nothing I can say except I hope your OH gets better very soon and that you are taking care of yourself.

Sue xx

Thank you Hayley, Ann, and Sue :)

Yes, that's what I'm trying to do Kay. I'm not suggesting that the hospital were wrong in discharging him as such, but; I do, think that they were wrong to leave us without information about the very rare, but very serious, complications that might ensue. And, in the end, had he stayed in hospital this would have been picked up sooner.

It does seem he was discharged very quickly. I know the hospital will say that patients heal better at home but sometimes I wonder if the rush is a need to have empty beds.

edit:
Maybe the best person to ask is your or your oh's GP.

Hope he gets better soon.
My son had a heart operation and he was in hospital for 7 days and we had loads of infomation packs about if anything goes wrong.
Trouble is though the NHS is under so much stress about bed spaces.

Fiona,

Firstly hope Hubby is on the mend.......My OH had hip resurfacing in May, he had the op on a wednesday and he was out Friday......too early in my opinion.......by Sunday his leg was so swollen we had to call the GP who sent us straight to A &E with a suspected clot........you can imagine how hard this was for OH just a couple of days post op. We were left to wait 2 hours with him barely able to sit for the pain, we eventually saw a doc who said yes you have a clot, but we have no scanner for 2 days!! so take extra medicine and come back in 2 days!!

I suspect there must be hundreds of post op patients with these type of things happening to them. They discharge them too early to free up beds, and then most of them end up using GP A&E and then back in hospital, so where is the point in that!

I have no doubt that the NHS are under enormous stress; even so, it seems that OH's consultant is one of the few that discharge their patients so early. I've spoken to about 3 nurses at the hospital over the past couple of days, all of whom were extremely surprised that he went home on Saturday. Apparently they expected that he would be in for at least 3 days.

Quite so, Ann. I sometime wonder if hospitals are paid for each empty bed that they can produce! I hope your husband didn't sustain any long term damage.

hello Fiona,

Luckily no he did not, but to be sent home with a suspected clot for 2 days is a nightmare of worrying, my point is that if he had stayed in they would have shot him down to the scanner pronto!


I think anyone that has had major surgery should be looked after by the proffesionals and they should not expect their partners/relatives to take over their roles so soon post op!

It does seem to be a trend ,operate and get em home quick to free up beds. My OH had a hammer toe op and he was discharged after three days with a BIG pin through his big toe to the first knuckle joint, Couldn't walk so we had to get a taxi too bring him home. he wasnt able to climb the stairs so made him up a bed in the lounge on the settee bed with a chair over the foot to make a space as he couldn't bear anything to touch his toe . After a few days i had to ring the surgery cos when you came into the house you could smell him! smelt like orf meat , they wanted him to get to the surgery said no way he cant walk anyway the district nurse had to come in and seems he had an infection that needed the nurse to come in for the next ten days and a course of antibiotics this was even before he went back to the hospital to have the pin taken out . He WONT have the other foot done!!
This was about ten years ago and they still doing get em in and send em home !

As I said it is all about saving money..........but do they in the long run when you have to use other resources such as casualty, docs etc, and then be readmitted!

Not taking into account the strain on the poor patient and his carers at home.