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