Madam, – My husband Christy arrived by ambulance to Galway’s University College Hospital, also known as “the cancer centre of excellence” on Tuesday, July 21st at about 10.20am and he lay on a trolley in his clothes for 29 hours (“Call for crowding at UCHG to be addressed”, July 23rd).
He had recently finished his third bout of chemotherapy. This consisted of chemo for 24 hours a day for five days, with a break of several days before the next bout started.
We were told that chemo is accumulative and that it is possible for the patient to become quite sick after he/she finishes the chemo. We were also told that if Christy felt sick we were not to delay but to get him into University College Hospital “the cancer centre of excellence” as quickly as possible so that he could get the best care possible.
On Tuesday morning Christy felt very sick and 29 hours later he was given a bed in St Enda’s very long ward and not in oncology as we had hoped. We were in the centre of chaos and the only excellence we experienced was from the ambulance driver and his assistant. – Yours, etc,