Munster Express Online

Friends of an elderly stroke victim, who is widowed and lives alone in Waterford city, said this week they were appalled at the lack of support given to her at the onset of her illness and even more distressed at the lack of aftercare she is currently experiencing.

The woman, who has no immediate living relatives, felt very unwell on a Saturday late last year and called an emergency doctor at 9am. The doctor called to her house just before 1pm and even though she (the patient) expressed the view that she was having a stroke, the doctor advised her to take an aspirin tablet and call her own GP on Monday morning.

Despite feeling increasingly unwell over the weekend the woman did as she was told and telephoned her own doctor early on Monday morning. Her GP arrived at the house within a couple of hours and immediately called for an ambulance to take the patient to Waterford Regional Hospital where, insist the woman’s friends, she should have been admitted two days earlier.

The woman, who had indeed suffered a stroke, spent several weeks in WRH and several more weeks in a ‘step-down’ bed in St Patrick’s Hospital and neither she nor her friends have any complaints about either stay.

However, since returning to her home, the woman has not received the ‘follow-on’ treatment she was promised and neither is she satisfied with the attendance of her home-care worker. According to friends, who found her, alone, distressed and upset when they called to her house, the situation is not the fault of any one worker but rather the financial cutbacks to the services that the stroke-victim so badly needs.

“As far as we are concerned, this is a woman who contributed to society all her life and now, when she herself is in need of care, all she is getting is excuses and is being left to fend for herself to a great extent. It is an unmitigated disgrace and the hypocrisy of a government that tells us all the wonderful things they are doing for the old and infirm is sickening”, said one of the woman’s friends.