2.90kg George’s weight today

2.90kg George’s weight today

Another increase and it looks like he’ll be on target for his operation.


Only he’s not having his operation. It’s been cancelled.

We got word this morning that the surgery meeting at St Thomas’ decided that they wouldn’t operate until after Christmas. Why? We’ve no idea at all and they’re giving no clues.

St Thomas’ also decided to up his medication – which meant that he would have to stay in hospital while the observations were done to check the medication did no harm.

However, the nurses were ready to up the medication, and keep us in the hospital, but not do any of the required monitoring. Lisa was in tears.

It turns out that because ST Thomas’ are a specialized cardiac ward and Kings are not, the two hospitals have different ideas about what’s normal monitoring. So when St Tomas’ say George needs monitoring after the medication is changed they mean blood pressure tests every 15 minutes for an hour followed by every half hour for 2 further hours.

Kings, however know nothing about this and would just monitor every four hours.

We just happened to mention that there were different rules at St Thomas’ and we were on the ball enough to insist that it was checked. And a good job too. If we hadn’t, and there had been a problem, nobody would have known about it for four hours! Or until the Crash team were called to resuscitate him!

How can this kind of misunderstanding happen? Surely it’s one of the most basic things in medical care?

The nurses tell us later that this kind of thing happens all the time.

Anyway, once everything got straightened out and explained it turned out we could be release from hospital at 8:30pm after the monitoring had finished.

I’m now determined to watch everything that happens in hospital – and not to be afraid to push it if things don’t seem to be as they should be.