the little people - the enemy of the state - IRISH HEALTH CARE

The ABC or the ABC and DEF of Healthcare and HSE

so sick in ireland

I contend that to understand the crisis of the Irish healthcare system it is mandatory to be poor, vulnerable, a woman and single or have spent a dash in psychiatry as a patient.

All will qualify you to understand the Irish systems we have at present and indeed getting worse.

You only need an extra tutorial in having an Insurance policy that is next to worthless but it will teach you a little extra that adds to the PhD.

Lets be fair to the Public health care system and say the crisis is not with the public.  That is, the vulnerable, poor, sick, single, female or those with a smash of experience in the psychiatric system.

Lets be fair too, it’s not the fault of the Private Healthcare system that they too are under pressure.

I wish to place the blame first so we get that out of the way – and thus pave the way for the ‘voice of the expert in all of this – the poor, sick, single lady who once spent an errant jaunt in the mental health system of Ireland’ (which also requires a lengthy tome in its dysfunctionality).

The blame is governance and inequality and a certain belief beyond which we seem unable to go.

Governance has to be blamed for if it was good, we would not have such a crisis and such a mess.

I also put squarely the blame on allowing the divide to exist or co-exist of inhumane inequalities in the rights to having healthcare in the country where the constitution claim we all as a nation have equal rights, yet we do not.

There are no equal rights.  It isn’t there and there is no legal structure in place to say we have the right to healthcare at present.

You can have healthcare if you are wealthy and the rest is by a sort of ‘stroking’ and discretion.

Be wary though of upsetting the consultants, they have the full power to deny your fundamental rights to having anything at all, and they will make you sweat for everything despite a tad bit of lick arse.

The divide between public and private care is huge, but now increasingly the flocks once in the public sector are swamping the private sector.

This now leaves many of us with no place to go. It is also made wider with the ability of Insurance suppliers demanding exhorbitant monies for policies riddled with loopholes and ‘get out’ clauses for the care you need.

We should never put in place a means to get healthcare by payment alone.

The country is not a wealthy one per se and I see this as a cohersion by the state through fear.  We have every right to be fearful.

To say if you can pay you will get healthcare falsifies the principals, which the state was founded upon.

The country a republic, was for all the citizens of the state.  We had been through oppressive oversight from superior empire state control.  We recognized the right to be free.

Yet we, now, do not recognize the right to be free of inequality.  We do not see healthcare as a republican ideal and nor as refusal of freedom from oppressive oversight.

It is NOW mandated that unless you have money you will not be cared for in this state of the Republic of Ireland.

If you are vulnerable, female, single, and poor you are open to abuse which is a societal tactic the Irish are so well used to by now having been abused for centuries before the foundation of the state.

We cannot yet call ourselves free if we cannot ride ourselves of the culture of abuse.

When we have waiting lists for a consultant leaving sick on lists for years some lists touching six years in fact before you face an expert we should know we are in deep trouble.

When we see that if you can pick up the phone give over your insurance policy number an appointment can be arranged at best within a week or at worst within a month.  We know we are in trouble.

The idea you can use austerity as the excuse that cuts have to be made is also erroneous and wrong.

If you cut healthcare now you are shoring up even worse physical and mental health problems in the future.

Each person ignored and denied healthcare will get worse quicker and some do not get better if left too long, at all.  This is a burden on the state but has been sanctioned by the state.  The state will eventually pay out far more to support these very sick individuals sooner rather than later and more so rather than less so.

This, the state has been informed about.

They know what they are facing by the lack of healthcare now and the crisis we have allowed presently means all this is to become.

The biggest fall out to the crisis of healthcare has been to the individual sick.

I class those at risk being the vulnerable, isolated, unsupported mainly single women and mentally ill as being particularly prone to being virtually attacked for being sick and demanding of health care and requesting their needs be met.

Countless examples of abuse of power can be named and documented through articles we see daily on disability forums, online journals and through other paper media.  The litany of abuses are rife, and you will find those subjected to abuse are the category I name alongside the intellectually impaired.

There is a great degree of ‘cherry picking’ now within the confraternity of the consultants base.  They can and do without sanction, dismiss a sick person for being demanding, demanding to have personal needs met and their own personal healthcare put in place.

In a structure of chaos mistakes are being made daily in the system and wise patients staying on top of their personal file can see where mistakes are made and if they are serious will mean you face the consultant with these mistakes,  you are then subjected to prompt dismissal and labeling and abuse.

These are all tactics to protect the powerful against their negligence and their need to keep a well paid job and do a job unhindered by the pesky plebs.

If they do a bad job there isn’t anything you can do we are rudderless through legislation for our rights.

Again we have no legal structures in place to face a very powerful body of men usually, who do bad things against the innocents in this state.

Within the structure of healthcare we also have a very close knit community of specialists and they have the means to process information which can be subject to deep suspicion from the client base.

If you are personally wronged, and you face the consultant they can pick up the phone and lambast you to anyone.  Its proven the bad blood built up between sick and their doctors is one which should never occur but does all too regularly, simply because you ask to be cared for, the system is chaotic mistakes are made and the system is chaotic there are no rules anymore or guidelines or doctors to deal with it all.

Mistakes should not be made, there should be a mechanism to resolve painful issues of relationship dynamic and all move on to greener pastures.

This doesn’t happen.   There is no mechanism to allow an easy working bond between patient and doctor in Ireland.

It is wide open to vast abuses of power and there is a gulf of ‘them and us’ I have not seen in other countries at all to date.

The culture of ‘tell all’ to your peers here is huge.

Anything can go from the lowly small time pros to the big shots at the speed of concord and so a single lady very ill can be perceived in a shot as a person to be avoided.

No one will ever believe her.

They tend to blame at a rapid rate, the usual culture of abuse so very easy to use, so readily instinctually drafted by genetic processing down the generations of abuse by others visited upon the Irish state and mentality.  Oppression was viewed then as being so well done by the british we have adopted it.

We have allowed the abuse of power seep through the pores by osmosis and allow it to be an acceptable tool to oppose your little worthless patients and it allows alarming power.

The level of power now of consultants is huge.

In fact this power is so great not only consultants have it as a tool but everyone in the health system has it.

Backed against a wall of dysfunction there is no tool left for the state to use other than abuse the power they hold over the citizens.

fighting back is the only way

It denies us any rights to fair practice.

The human rights and equality commission has been decimated of personnel and function in recent years.

We have no real human rights for those who are disabled and sick.

There is no legal framework to fight abuse

We have not even got this fully enshrined in the constitution.

You cannot face them in any shape or form, nor can you go to the courts and do it either because the court system is also based on money and ability to pay for the justice you deserve.

You cannot go to Europe because they require you to exhaust the avenues open in the state of origin, but if you cannot use these as the first steps you cannot use European laws and no one here will assist the poor to do so.

We have now in Ireland a state that allows a basic ‘free for all.’

Over and above those who are secure knowing that they can walk in and get help because they have power or money the rest can rot in hell and considerable pain and anquish with no quality of life at all.

It doesn’t even work in the private sector either because having a policy is not necessarily a safe guard that you will get the help you need.

The policies are wrapped around ‘add ons’ and ‘exceptions to the rule.’

You may be able to afford the famous policy but cannot afford the consultants fees and can only get back a certain amount, or may be restricted what your policy will cover.  It’s a very cleverly designed document allowing the insurance companies to maximize their gains allowing them the right to minimize their costs offset by the cost of the policies.

They are racking in the money.

stats will show where we stand and its not looking good.  It is becoming harder and more chaotic

the stats say it all, watch out for holy ireland in these, expert documented stats

This country is not being served well by this awful divisive divide.

It doesn’t work.

It will and cannot ever work.

once we were happier, hopeful and engaged.  at my twins conferring for doctorate i see her being bullied and butchered by the irish state healthcare systems. This is not what she was used to in the UK, ever.

I can tell you for sure, she doesnt think it fortunate to come home to the country she loved and left 45yrs to abusive practise and a terrible dangerous healthcare system.  she has instant regrets about coming back.

Health is one such thing that cannot be a commodity or a money making racket.

It has become an obscene racket and at any cost to state, power, abuse, insurance, economics and dynamic.

It doesn’t serve best healthcare.

People like myself go through life on the edge.

You are very sick and powerless.

You have an insurance policy and yet it gives you little and you can use it infrequently.

You have to rely on a public service which is discretionary and you can be years trying to find a way to even get a diagnosis because consultants can withdraw the ability to allow a diagnosis if peeved by their patients, see above.

left to lanquish in pain, forgotten and poor

not a figment of imagination, you feel it and spot it instantly.

This has now occurred for two women facing a consultant with his faults, his mistakes and his lack of interest.

you seek it here, you seek it there, you seek it everywhere.  at the end of the day a grind of a fight for medical and community healthcare services is taking its toll on us two.  this is nothing short of neglect and abuse.

you get through one  but face another around the corner and another never ending fight.

It means in essence he couldn’t care a toss and its no more than a paper exercise, he wants an easy life, make money and move on.

You are but a speck in his eye.

There you will remain.

The bond of trust long gone in Irish healthcare by two women in wicklow.

Ireland is sinking into an immoral depravity and we all see it and feel helpless.

All the scandals of the day are laid out in plain lingo from the Gards to the mother and baby homes, Irish water but never healthcare.

permanently tired of it all, but with great company

you are barely able to function at time so harsh is the trauma.  comfort comes in small parcels, furballs.

We have been squashed in protest.

We feel imbeciles to protest.

We feel feeble in protest.

The people have been crushed.

They are now accepting the crumbs from the table because there seems no answers.

The only answer I see to the collective response of abuse of power and inequality is through protests and civil disobedience.

The poor people of Ireland ejected the greatest power of world dominance the Imperial state of the British Kingdom, we did this so we can do this too.

some kind of bird of what?  as i trawl the darkness in the corridors at night in a strange hospital.

We are not feeble in thinking.  We have great powers of persuasion and we are cute as the devil.

We are so cute I tell you we can persuade someone to believe that possibly the greatest kingdom that ever lived is that of the Irish ‘land of saints and scholars’.

there is a madness in your head, the despair thats in it.   There is a madness on the heads of those who rule and there is a stuffed icon of Irish in the hilarity of pretence, we are but stuffed.

Scratch the surface we are neither and never were.

We were poor, we were dirt poor, we survived through a system of leeching off the one even poorer or buttering up the one better off then oneself.

Either way we got our way through devious means, and we continue to do this at the highest levels.

The problem is, when downtrodden and sick its hard to fight that hard in modern times and powerful influences.

We have lost our moral code and ethical beliefs that all people are equal and united.  Some definitely count now more so than others.

you were a mess when you came to london last year, the consultant reminds me. this after my first 'out' he noted i had improved but declared i was a walking wreck so sick was i.

my first 'out' under the E112 gave terrific first diagnosis and furthered the knowledge of what is wrong, but still no definitive answers, such is the journey of those with rare diseases in ireland and the awful battles we have to go through

lighting up the light in our three weeks state at a major hospital in the UK, still more work needs to be done they say - ireland ignores this advice for the past two years.

the singing ambulance man in a top centre of excellence in London UK

it is imperative you leave ireland to get the help you need, what if you are stuck and cannot get out again?  our situation right now is Medical entrapment, emprisonment by the state consultants.  we cannot get out at present - another fight, daily grind of fight

in a UK hospital in a bed opposite myself is my identical twin, our need is the change of the diagnosis, which is our right according to the medical council of ireland but that is not what the consultants believe.  we do not enjoy medical imprisonment in a state that doesnt care a toss.

We are moving and shifting to a dangerous place.

We are moving away from the common good to the common bad.

We are moving over a precipice and it’s not a pleasant and easy ride.

Public v Private Healthcare in Ireland - the great divide

Galway University Hospital did not get the seal of approval from any of its working consultants there, deemed it dangerous.

wexford thousands are on a waiting list for 6-9yrs to see a consultant

over 150 doctors are upgraded to consultant status, even though they are not qualified to be at this grade.

Ann is in public healthcare and has a story - her story.
its an extraordinary position to be in.
aged 64yrs i have been seriously ill now for most of a decade.
i have a progressive neurodegenerative disease process which is rare, it has no name and yet visible deletions on the mtDNA have been found and alongside this many other issues have been found.
I suffer the following:
Hypothryoidism
CRS (congenital rubella syndrome)
severe/profound hearing loss
Glaucoma
Macular degeneration
Dystonia
Parkinsonism
Myopathy
Crohns disease
Gluten intolerance
Raynauds
Sjogrens Syndrome
Menieres disease
Pes Cavis deformity
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Oesteoarthritis
Gall stones
Kidney stones
My guts are failing and on nerve stimulant
Dermatitis.
I have had one stroke 
(no one told me i had this in 2013, i only discovered i had when looking at hospital notes through FOI)
Ovarian Cyst (no one told me that either)

Comments made through the public health system and its consultants:

"You don't have parkinsons disease, you just want it."  this after a positive DAT scan.
"i am going to do tests and PROVE nothing is wrong with you."
"a movement disorder from some past trauma."  (they mean here a psychological event causing a psycho-physical result, rubbished by a top Irish female neurologist when she heard this comment, thankfully!)

I have had consultant not treating me as inpatient for a week until i was psychiatrically assessed.
a consultant letting me out of hospital after a three hour surgery, major surgery for crohns disease with an infected wound, bursting three days later.
3am this wound burst and a big wad of cotton wool plastered over the gaping wound, 6pm the ambulance came for me!  i was in an old people's home, i was 47!  no one would give me after care in the family setting.
doctors walking out of the consultation room because you ask to go to a discipline recommended in the UK centre of excellence.

now lets look at care, yep.
CARE!
I have no neurologist.
I have not seen a rheumatologist in over a year and a half, i have had a major flare in that time and had to get my knees aspirated when i drove myself to a hospital so ill that after a week everything 'blew' my knees swelling horribly.
most of my teeth are now gone through decay through gum desease brought on by sjogrens syndrome which was not diagnosed for two years in ireland and only diagnosed when i managed to get out of ireland.
NO neuromuscular tests have ever been done in Ireland.
recommendations for further tests on muscles have been made two years ago to the Irish consultant but nothing has happened.
recommendations for:
hydrotherapy
ongoing physiotherapy
neuro-physiotherapy and guided program by such.
neuro-physiology work up
intensive work on muscle strengthening, gait and function
Botox advised in the UK not done
Psychologist advised by neurorehabilitation centre in 2009, only recently received - 2017.

wiped off the lists of these disciplines:
gynaecology - even though i have an ovarian cyst and fibroids
ENT - even though i have menieres, chronic mastoiditis, deafness and persistent ear infections
refusal to be sent to an Endocrinologist, advised in 2011 and still not seen by 2016 but went privately to be told thyroid replacement not stable, it has taken over a year to set a replacement dosage that will stabilize the production of hormones.
ill fitting shoes provided for pes cavis, causing toe nails to be ripped off, fall causing fractured rib and also two complete tears to my shoulder muscles, inoperable.
i have troubling symptoms requested to be investigated in Uk getting worse.
i believe its Vascular.  A recent public consultation when finally getting to a top specialist in ENT surgery said the symptoms were not caused by my menieres or mastoiditis.

do i actually have any medical cover right now.
No, i do not.
i have good cover for my crohns and guts.
That is it.
Nothing else, no neurologist, no tests, no support, no therapies, no oversight, no speicalist nurse.  Nada.

Now, if i was in the Private system.
All would be dealt with speedily, i would never be waiting over two and a half years for a surgeon to investigate troubling head disturbances.
there is a great divide here in Ireland between public health care and private.
those in the Private system would barely know what is happening in the Public.
those in the Public system know it to be frightening and dangerous.
its a scary place to be and a scary country to be sick in.
we now have the worst healthcare system in Europe.
there is nothing we can do about it on a personal level.
It does not stop me telling my readers how awful it is, how terrifying it is, to know that at anytime sloppy medicine can kill me off in a second in this country.
I can even have a registrar stick a steriod into my head under the skin in A'E, a registrar who had no patients allocated to him so new he was to the hospital.  this injection caused a blood clot.
Had he or my primary consultant (now lost) not been aware that my clotting rate is double that of the normal cohort.
well if they did, they ignored it.
I think they didnt bother to read my notes.
amen to that.
i say.

Sick in IRELAND - Sick of being Sick in Ireland

it is very difficult being sick in Ireland today.

just before i became unwell - from this....to.....

 this and its very stressful, barely able to live, our life is consumed with the lack of any real medical care to speak of

Once upon a time, before i was unwell i used to go to the GP for normal small illnesses that everyone gets.  No issues.  None at all.  they got dealt with and everyone was happy.  conversations were good, some really funny and some embarrassing.
But you spoke to your doctor.  You asked private questions, you talked about your ups and downs and you may have got a cream or a pill for a few days or some general bloods.

the experience was never painful.

now the experience is hell.  Today i have multiple medical issues.
the most difficult doctor encounters are with the consultants in the Public sector of our healthcare system.
i am terrified now of going to any.  i have been very abused verbally.  I have had men walk out of the room, just pick up my files and walk.

despite now being in a wheelchair for most of these consultations i find them very intimidating.
You would think as you became sicker that doctors would become kinder and more emphatic and sympathetic, but nothing could be further from the truth.

they dont want to know.
they will even go so far as saying they will do more tests to 'prove' nothing is wrong with you.
they can shout at you 'you don't have parkinsons disease you just want it'  that despite a report citing i had the early stages of it.
rudeness is dreadful.
a single lady going alone into a room with no support from these male attacks to me is wrong.
they should not happen.

i can from time to time use private health insurance.
NEVER have i been so accosted as i have been in the public system.
there is a vast difference in medical attention, their ability to switch from being wonderful when paid to being nightmarish when i do not give them money but the state does.  that is a big difference in their eyes.
i hate it.
its abuse of power.  its an extreme form of dominance over women, vulnerable women and its torturous.
Not all are like this, but very few are actually that kind, i do have two that are the rest are a ghastly ordeal.

doctors also refuse to write recommendations here in Ireland, simply refuse to advocate for their patients in the public system.  they claim the HSE will not take a blind bit of notice so they don't bother.
they will not advocate for a better wheelchair.
they will not advocate for physio, for more tests or for better support in the home.
they do the bare minimum and quality of life isnt part of their remit.

a rheumatologist who can see on a scan that you have nerve entrapment, kyphosis and oestopena and a fractured rib will not advocate for a more comfortable wheelchair here.
he also knows i suffer from chronic pain and dystonia and posturing and am an older person.
he walked out of the room when i asked to be referred to a specialist recommended by UK consultants.

another sacked me.
After admitting he should have done something about the reports coming back from the UK.

we now turn our hands on how patients and clients living in the community deal with the main healthcare provider, the HSE.

seen tonight was a letter that an OT in the community claims that any recommendations by a consultant cuts no ice with a HSE assessment.
can you beat that?
i would have thought that a consultant is the top of the food chain.
this OT gave a lousy assessment.  a wheelchair assessment without a wheelchair or wedges or wheelchair specific questioning is not a wheelchair assessment.
if she doesnt give a damn what a consultant says about a woman needing a better wheelchair, why would she if she herself doesnt understand the meaning of a better wheelchair.
end of professionalism straight away.

if the HSE do not take advise from Irish consultants, where do they get expert medical advise so?
good question this one.
i have been told by HSE that i cannot give in medical reports from doctors as they have known them to be forged.  LOVERLY i say.
i am a crook now and a piece of shit according to the doctors caring for the poor here.

we now have a situation where two women aged 64 with a progressive neurodegenerative disorder do not live as most would understand it.
we live daily in terror, if we have a consultant appointment we are fearful of what we will meet.
when the postman comes we are terrified of a letter from the dreaded HSE.
its simples, the daily grind of sickness and disease and disability is denuding us of our right to enjoy much at all these days.
there is a pall over our existence and a weight second to none.

at present healthcare is non existent.
we get nothing from our present consultants and we do not have a neurologist.
you wouldnt believe how tough it is to get a doctor on board now in ireland and of course no one has the power to request a doctor to care for sick people here!
yes, again i feel its come to the point that the consultants actually can chose who they treat.

even though we have been about 15yrs in neurology care here we now for the past year have had none.
i call this refusal to care, neglect and euthansia by stealth, i do not mince my words when i say this is the 'taking of a life'

i got sick and was left two years like this, already marked muscle wasting can be seen and Ireland diagnosed nothing.  Only when i escaped Ireland did i begin to get an understanding of what was wrong with me.

i do not mince my words that the HSE are doing the same thing, 'taking my life.'

name calling, dodgy suspect communication within the HSE about their clients is rife.
they dont care a toss either.

The winner of the Emma Memorial Prize UK who is tortured in her ill health in Ireland.
i want people to know its unacceptable to put my twin through so much anquish in her last days because of abuse, the very thing my twin fought for others against their abuse for decades.

we have been called everything under the sun by both the hospital doctors and the HSE.

you'd never think that our real needs are care for the sole purpose of getting that life in place that once we may have known.

its called 'finding enjoyment again'  now with a sickness and disability.
but this is life now, this torrid tormented way of having to live it.

you are consumed with feeling the dregs of society.
you are consumed by the feeling of being put down as absolutely not worth to be called an irish citizen as if i was a thief in the night or a murderer or worse.

you are nothing here in this small island if you are sick.
we can go nowhere with our complaints.
we cannot complain about the doctors who ignore expertise from abroad, we can do nothing if the doctors walk out of the room, nothing if they insult you or dismiss you or are rude, abusive and neglectful.

you can do nothing if the HSE get into a huddle like vultures deciding the time and place for taking some pickings off your bones.
this could be violently inappropriate behaviour around a persons rights to their own homes.  it can be through designating their clients as 'serial complainers.'  Well the media made a field day of that one thank god someone saw the light in that one!

but more has been said and done to us twins.
i stood in the car park of the gp practise after my twin's gp had walked out on her.

from this when well but becoming sick to this...

it is not a problem showing the hospital that gave both of us an agonising time of it, the deterioration in ability to feel happiness is self evident as too is the sickness and disability

my twin was distraught and was sitting weeping on her wheelchair when i immediately drove down to her as she said 'rescued' her.
how can a doctor walk out like that.
the encounter was harmless, she had a right to a correct letter of referral be drafted and a right to say the letter written would not actually be much use, it would not have been and she was right to go down and request a stronger more detailed approach.  she has this right as a patient needing care.
and the doctor 'a good man' according to his colleague, had no right to walk out and leave my twin bawling needing 'rescuing'
i am livid.
i had to hug my twin who was weeping horribly saying she wished she was dead and what a horrible country this is.

this is a woman who won the Emma Humphries Memorial prize in the UK for her outstanding work for women who had been abused.  Only one woman each year is given such a prestigious award.

she comes back to ireland after 45yrs and goes from being a lecturer of disability and abuse in the UK, northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, bought in by the HSE to train up social workers in this country until of course they defamed her and she won some compo off the HSe.
after that when she retired home in severe ill health she is trashed by the ignorant sods we have in our healthcare system.
just ignorant, arrogant, unprofessional men and also a HSE who hasnt got skill and i mean it simply is devoid of a sophisticated organised way of dealing with sickness and disabilty.
its a bloody eye opener for her so shocking i doubt my twin will recover from the shock of being part of the greatest healthcare system in the world as she worked as  a lecture and a social worker and a woman doing great work for abused women, to coming home to be abused by her very  own.

i am sending this out to the doctors of the Irish state and to the HSE.
the day we became sick was the day our life ended.
why? because we daily have to face abuse, ridicule, abandonment, neglect, abuse of power and name calling. 

expect a meal like this when you are sick in Ireland - a home help taking a rotting 'off' bit of mince from the freezer and tossing a few bare potatoes on the plate.  realising the meat was 'off' of course i didnt eat this - but this is what you cannot object to. 

this isnt a healthcare service by any stretch of the imagination.
Ireland is a torture chamber for the sick and disabled now.
its torturous journey to the grave.
when we do not have legal rights to defend ourselves against this enslaught you can safely say we are 'enslaved' to abuse here.
and because there is no legal rights for us this is what happens.
i am letting this out to the world.
this has now the worst healthcare system in europe and getting even worse.
we also have the worse public sector workers in Europe according to latest stats but i am less clear why they have called us this and to be honest, i am dealing with one such public sector body the HSE so i know its a mess so fully understand how the public sector is also a mess in all other areas where we need civil servants.
I have to say 'Dying for your country' takes on a whole new meaning living in your country as a sick and disabled woman.
welcome to the land of the saints and scholars.
Ireland, a nightmarish place for us.

the final image of course says much, we are now protestors and protectors of the truth.  we will not sit down under abuse and be expected to take it, nor will others who will come out and say it as it is before the Dail.  they may not come out to meet us but we will go to them and tell them - indirectly if not face to face