I watched

I watched my father-in-law die today.

He was 84 and had been in a rest-home for a while. Had a GI tract upset over the past couple of weeks, not helped by large doses of iron tablets. Complained of gut pain but otherwise his normal cheery self. But very weak.

This morning the home rang my husband. It was urgent. An ambulance was called. I received the message and bolted to A&E with tissues and juice and hair still dripping from the shower. That was about 10am.

Met husband, mother-in-law and eldest stepson in the resus-room. My husband's ex-wife's-Mum brought the other 2 kids in.

The doctor explained that they suspected he had ruptured his lower aorta, but after ultrasound checks decided it was more likely to be either a ruptured bowel or clot preventing blood reaching the bowel.

FIL couldn't talk and he was having lots of trouble breathing. The hospice nurse was called and she spoke of "changing focus".

FIL was given more fentanyl and later morphine for the pain.

He passed away at noon, surrounded by love.

We are ok. Very sad, but grieving positively. There have been floods of love and support from everyone touched by this.

Complaints-ahoy!

Hi folks, so sorry it's been so quiet here recently. I've moved all the diabetic stuff to another blog so I can talk to a wider audience, while the IF stuff will stay here. It's just that there has been NOTHING happening!

Until today: I visited the HDC advocate again and got my letters of complaint finalized. Wow. What a lot of paperwork! My HDC advocate has been amazing and so helpful. I wrote a massive letter to the Health and Disability Commissioner himself, and my advocate basically guided me through the process. Which is thorough!

So it's in the post today, and it could be weeks or months before we hear anything back.

There are a couple of different potential outcomes. The Commissioner could:

- choose to take no action.

- direct the complaint to some form of medical board (didn't hear this option clearly)

- send me back to low-level advocacy i.e. If I want to keep fighting then all that would be left is writing individual complaint letters to the different providers (up to 5 letters)

- or my preferred option, where he decides that the whole system needs to be reviewed at a systemic level; the law is changed.

OK now I'm not expecting miracles. I don't think this will actually make our wait shorter or the process fairer, but as the advocate said: all these complaints add up and become part of their statistics; if others have also complained about the unfairness of the infertility treatment funding system in New Zealand then it could add weight to the stats.

So, now we wait. At least I know I'm good at that!