Mum Had a Fall, Went to the NHS, Barely Escaped

By someone who now has a minor degree in Sitting Around While Things Happen Slowly

My mum had a fall.

This is how many British epics begin, except instead of dragons and swords, you get a phone call at 2pm and a growing sense that your day is about to be completely rewritten by forces beyond your control, such as gravity, scheduling systems, and a printer that may or may not be working.

She’d actually fallen the night before, but didn’t phone me until the next day. My mum is what medical professionals call “stubborn,” which is not technically a diagnosis but should be. She had a completely closed and bruised right eye, a slumped left shoulder, and the general appearance of someone who had lost a disagreement with a staircase. But she’s sanguine. Hardy. The sort of person who treats injury as a mild administrative inconvenience.

I gently told her off. This had no effect.

We tried to get her to A&E the normal way, which is to say, optimistically. It quickly became clear that this was not going to work, in the same way it becomes clear a canoe is not ideal for crossing the Atlantic.

So we called 999.

To their credit, the ambulance service was excellent. We did a remote diagnosis using an iPhone camera, which felt like the future, if the future involves holding your phone at a strange angle while saying things like, “Can you see her eye?” They advised the quickest option was to drive her in.

This is where things began to unravel.

We arrived in Cheltenham hospital around 2pm. We left around 9pm, though “left” is a strong word. It implies a sense of completion.

In those seven hours, we saw a doctor once. Around us, staff came and went in a way that suggested they had all just been dropped into the building five minutes earlier and were still locating the exits.

At one point, an ambulance crew brought in a patient. There was a long discussion. Eventually, someone told them they couldn’t bring the patient into Cheltenham A&E if there was a chance treatment would run past 8pm.

The crew had no idea.

Nobody, it seemed, had any idea.

This, I should stress, did not feel like a new problem.

Mum had two scans. This sounds promising until you learn they scanned the wrong area, which is not ideal in a profession where accuracy is generally considered helpful. By now, Cheltenham was effectively closing for business, like a shop that sells very urgent things but only until tea time.

After six hours, a doctor spoke to another doctor, possibly using a system involving telepathy or carrier pigeon, and informed us we needed to go to Gloucester, about 30 minutes away, and start again.

This did not land well.

Also, at 8pm, their entire system went down. This was apparently planned, which raises the question: why?

Five minutes later, there were about ten staff gathered in a small group, all asking what to do now that the system had gone down, which is not the kind of question you want to hear in a hospital.

At one point, everyone left. No nurses. No doctors. Just me and my mum, sitting in a large A&E ward that felt like the set of a low-budget apocalypse film.

At most times, there were plenty of staff, to be clear. They were just… elsewhere. Chatting. Typing. Existing in a parallel universe where things made more sense.

So off we went to Gloucester.

We arrived around 10pm and were sent to the Surgical Assessment Unit, which was quiet in the way a library is quiet, if the library occasionally mentions internal bleeding.

We were seen quickly, which was encouraging, and then told it would be many hours before Mum could have the scan she should have had eight hours earlier.

She finally had it at 11am the next day, after a two-minute consultation with a consultant who asked roughly the number of questions you would ask someone borrowing your pen.

Hurrah, the scan was done.

Then we needed to wait for the consultant to look at the scan.

Five hours later, hurrah again.

Then we needed to be discharged.

Apparently, that would take another few hours, which suggests that leaving a hospital is a highly complex process involving at least one wizard.

All the while, my mum, who is 81, was distressed and just wanted to go home, which did not seem like an unreasonable ambition.

By my rough calculation, she received about 30 minutes of actual care over 24 hours.

This feels inefficient.

It also feels expensive.

Not just in money, though I suspect that part is eye-watering, but in human cost. For her. For everyone else we saw. Because we met some wonderful people. Kind, patient, doing their best in a system that often felt confusing, inconsistent, and strangely indifferent to time.

We also saw some heartbreaking things. People waiting. People worried. People trying to make sense of something that doesn’t always make sense.

Hospitals are intense places. Incredible places. Full of skill and effort and humanity.

But as a system, this felt broken.

Not because the people don’t care.

But because the system often doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing.

Mum’s now home.

Bruised and broken, but not defeated.

Which, all things considered, feels like a win.