Friday 25 May 2012

Oh, You're Wrong., It IS A Freak Show...

Large dust sheets and tarpaulins were put up outside her home in Aberdare, South Wales, so the operation could be conducted in private.
'This is not a freak show,' said a police officer.
Builders had to remove a window before tearing down an external and internal wall to free Miss Davis from her semi-detached council house. Scaffolding and a makeshift bridge were used to move her safely, and while there was a crane on site, it is not thought it was used to lift her.
Residents said the operation to move Miss Davis began just after 9am, and she was seen leaving the scene in an ambulance just after 5pm.
The cost of the operation – involving police, fire service and ambulance crews – is likely to run into tens of thousands of pounds to cover manpower, plus the emergency call-out and the reconstruction of the demolished walls.
...but the freak isn't young Georgia Davies, but the grotesque priorities of the NHS itself. The NHS happy to sit idly by as her carers slowly kill her as assuredly as if they were beating her daily:
In August 2008, a 33st Georgia was told by doctors to 'lose 20 stones or die'.
Spurred into action, Georgia attended a £3,600-a-month Wellspring diet academy in the US for nine months, during which time she shrank to 18st and beat her Type 2 diabetes. She was seen by behavioural coaches, food psychologists and fitness trainers and encouraged to walk 10,000 steps every day.
She returned to the UK in June 2009 to look after her mother who has a heart condition.
But she reverted to old habits when she returned home.
'When I arrived my mum said she hadn't had time to prepare any healthy food so we had fish and chips instead,' she said. 'For that moment on, I had a niggling feeling that things weren't going to work out.'
Yet which, while it's happy to leap into action once things reach critical mass, and free her from her prison with all the care of Seaworld staff assisting a stranded fin whale, it's strangely blasé about ensuring that patients already in their care don't starve to death, that they don't die through neglect and incompetence, that patients are properly diagnosed in the first place.

Yes, there's a freak show here, all right.

Thursday 10 May 2012

Patient’s corpse was left unnoticed in hospital car park for 2 days

From The Metro:

The 79-year-old man’s corpse was found in his car by an attendant patrolling the area.
He had driven to the hospital for an appointment on Thursday last week but was not discovered until shortly after 11am on Saturday.

His Ford Fiesta was parked in a disabled parking area and a hospital spokesman said, although this was regularly patrolled, it was not unusual for cars to remain for a longer period of time without raising suspicion.

‘Contrary to information printed in some media, the gentleman was not slumped across the steering wheel of the car,’ the spokesman added. ‘All CCTV has been passed to the police and, therefore, we cannot say with any certainty how long he had been in his car.’

Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the death at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, Devon, but say they are not treating it as suspicious ‘at this time’. The deceased is believed to have been from the Leigham area of the city and his next of kin has been informed.

Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust said the man was not visible to anyone walking past. When he was found near the outpatients department, the trust’s emergency response team attended before paramedics and police were called. Car park operator Vinci Park UK has yet to comment.