Day 26-27: Impatient line

After yesterday's moodiness, dad felt a bit better today. He realised that he needed to apologise to my mum for refusing her acupuncture treatment and upsetting her. He was very sleepy. Nothing much happened during the day, and then just after dinner, dad's bed was moved again, without warning, just shift the furniture and go! Apparently the ratio of men to women stroke patients determines the changing of bays. I guess I can understand that but nobody explains this to you unless you ask. And just after dinner when patients begin snoozing... not the best time is it?

The following day, I rushed dad down from the bay into the lobby area so we could make a phone call to his relatives in Chengdu. Dad's very close to his younger brother but both are both terribly deaf. So conversations tend to be loud and between other relatives. Anyhow, after the call, dad got very emotional and cried and cried and couldn't stop. I tried to comfort him. He told me he just had to let it out.

Once back in the bay much frustration ensued with Patientline - the crappy 'providers' of bedside TV. Maybe we should be grateful that this hospital is advanced enough to have such facilities, but when clients get consistently wound up by shoddy service and rude telephone operators, is it worth it? Basically, our previous bedside unit had cocked up and they owed us some money. The new bedside unit - whilst having nothing wrong with it - would not work because we had complained about the old bedside unit. When it did start showing something, it claimed we had no pennies in our account and trying to get their 'client service' to reimburse us was like getting blood out of a stone. Whenever a repair person actually comes up to your bedside physically, inevitably they'll say there is nothing they can do here, they have to go back to their 'office'.

I was very ready to give up on the whole sorry business, but M - one of the very nice nurses on the ward - decided to help us out. She phoned Patientline and basically harangued them mercilessly until they crumbled. "Don't you think patients are under enough stress and have enough worries without dealing with your service?" What a good point. With her help we managed to get the 48 hours of TV that we were owed. So I told dad to stop watching his DVD!

M told us that Patientline used to be good at the beginning. They cleaned and checked all the units and provided excellent service. But later it just fell apart and they didn't seem to care anymore. Other patients and relatives also complained. For example, one nice trick they like to do is make you buy pre-paid cards. If the amount left falls below a minimum, you have to buy another card as the old one won't work. So you lose out what is left and end up with dozens of cards with amounts of cash left on. You have to phone them to get reimbursed on this. How crap! It's perverse, taking advantage of people who are poorly.