Admission of failure

I am in a good position to report from the NHS frontline, having been in hospital with pneumonia for just over a week from 28 December.

I was admitted following an early evening visit from a district nurse to the home I share with my younger daughter, her husband and their three children. The nurse rang A&E to advise them of my impending arrival but warned us that there was a four-hour wait for an ambulance. My daughter therefore decided to drive me in, and we arrived at a packed casualty unit. I was desperate for oxygen and my daughter begged at the reception desk for me to be triaged to access some, with no success. At 11.30 p.m. I was finally examined and hooked up to an oxygen supply.

I was found a bed in the admissions ward at 4 a.m., in an atmosphere reminiscent of a war zone. We were a mixed bunch: a minxy starlet type who had overdosed and whose miserable-looking geezer boyfriend slept in a chair by her bedside until she was discharged; a person in a pink nightie with a deep bass voice, identifying as female; an elderly case of self-neglect who had to be cut out of her underwear, nits removed from her nether regions by two kind and sympathetic nurses; a woman who went for a scan and was then moved to the operations ward.