Dear Dr Reilly

Dear Dr Reilly



Dear Dr Reilly I hope you are well

Did you hear how Roscommon is going to hell

With closures and cut-backs like 1,2 and 3

Roscommon is left with no A & E.



Dear Dr Reilly I think you’d agree

Your sorry plan is so plain to see

When our families are left with loss and despair

While you sit quite comfy in your office chair.



Dear Dr Reilly I hope you do know

2 hours to Galway is so very slow

In the back of an ambulance, the crew in the zone

To a 4 am checkout with no ride home.



So Dr Reilly I’ll say this in closing
Your plan for Roscommon we will be opposing.

Roscommon refugees

On Thursday 11/8/2011 people in Roscommon got together for another night of protesting at the county hospital. With the accident and emergency department now downgraded to a urgent care centre, we were still protesting to have our service reinstated.

The UCC is supposed to be open from 8 am to 8 pm yet on Thursday the security guards thought it best or were ordered to keep the door “locked” and ask everyone approaching to state there business at the door. I arrived at the hospital at 19:30 with a cut to my forehead, not overly serious but enough to warrant entry. My face was covered in blood as was my hand from where I had wiped blood from my eye. Visibly I was a mess as any one could see. When I rang the bell on the intercom I was met by a security guard, face to face, who asked “who are you visiting?” Maybe I am naïve and it is standard or the norm for people visiting friends and relatives in hospital bleeding profusely from the head.

I had been walking up and down the pavement outside for almost an hour in protest and had worked up a sweat, however on getting in to see a doctor for this small cut on my forehead I was asked if I had chest pain, shortness of breath, pain anywhere to which I answered no. But I was put on a drip and a heart monitor. Granted my blood pressure was on the high side and my pulse was high too but remember I had been protesting outside and the stress of being in a hospital a & e.

The doctor told me he didn’t like the look of my E.C.G. and called 999. “We can’t admit you here” I was told. For a small cut on my forehead?. I was given oxygen and an ambulance crew came in. The crew told me I would be taken to the ambulance but a second crew would be taking me to Galway (University College Hospital Galway) I asked was all this necessary and the doctor replied “we need to send you, we can’t treat you here“.

I was strapped to a trolley and placed in the ambulance, I was asked the questions again and I found the ambulance men to be polite and very professional. I was hooked up to the heart monitor which also had a timer and a clock on the wall behind it. The ambulance was driven around to the base at the back of the hospital where the second crew were waiting to take me to Galway. Before we left Roscommon I asked if I could refuse to go to Galway to which I was told “It’s a bit late now”. So the journey began.

I stated that I felt like I was taking an ambulance away from Roscommon, that someone in a more serious condition would need them more than I did, “people travel by ambulance with much less wrong with them” I was told. I found the journey to be uncomfortable and I felt every bump in the road and every pump of the break pedal. Half way down, one of the ambulance crew had to stop somewhere and use the bathroom. From the time I had been hooked up to the ambulance heart monitor to the time I arrived at UCHG 2 hours had past. 2 hours!

I waited in the corridor until 2 am before a doctor was able to see me. By which time my pulse was 84 and my blood pressure back to normal. I was told twice that things looked “perfect” My blood sugar was 5.6. The nurse and doctor couldn’t really understand why I was sent to Galway at all. As I lay in the A& E I heard nurses talking and the main theme was that they were short staffed. I could see with my own eyes just how busy they were. It was flat out.

I was taken off the drip and allowed to get up. I needed to stretch my legs and went for a walk. There were people everywhere. The halls were full of people waiting on either a trolley or on a chair. All different ages and different problems. This is the situation that Dr. James Reilly now considers “safe” for the 63,000+ people of Roscommon county. To unload another hospitals A & E cases to struggling hospitals in the Midlands and West of Ireland.

I have an even greater respect for the doctors and nurses. They work hard and they are the first to take the hits once the governmental scissors decide to make cuts. I was finally met by what I assumed to be the doctor in charge who wanted to talk to me. He seemed to want to lecture me about time wasting but I said that I seemed to have little choice in the whole matter, “this is not a prison” he said “you could have said no at any time”. I seem to remember saying no a hell of a lot but it didn’t seem to matter. He also told me that the majority of cases are like my case that night “you could consider it a waste of time”. When I asked his opinion on Roscommon Hospital, “I have no opinion” he said “ Most A&E around the country could be reduced to an 8 to 8 service if we didn’t have to deal with cases like yours that are not emergencies” he said.

I took little comfort in that as I was told I could leave at 4 am, in Galway city, 79 kilometres from home with no car and a 3 hour wait for the bus. I left UCHG and as I looked back more people were going in. There was a group of people with head injuries, blood everywhere, accompanied by the Garda. It was scary. But it is what the hospital must deal with day to day.

My first hand experience has showed me the gravity of the situation. A small cut and suspected heart trouble took me on this journey and my eyes were opened. Hospitals around the country are working hard on local cases and now have to cope with the Roscommon contingent. The people of Roscommon are now medical refugees and it is a lottery to where you will end up in an emergency. How can this be more safe? Please someone explain it to me....

Open your borders.

It's no secret I have waged a personal war with depression these past few years but I always said that it was more of an awakening to the world around us. It is sad when you see the passing of someone so special like Amy Winehouse and Heath Ledger in 08. But it hurts so much more when you see what has happened in Norway. My thoughts are with those poor people right now but it is nothing new. Kane Killed Abel after all. His own brother.

I suppose the point of this blog, is to just tell anyone that may read this, strength is needed but not might. fighting is needed but not violence. You need strength to accept each other for what we are, we need to fight to keep our borders open. Our personal borders. Our fears of the unknown should be replaced with the desire to know more about that which is so scary.

JFK said: we are one human family and this one planet is our home.
I say: please don't turn your back on me and in return I will never turn my back on you. I don't care where you are from or where you were born. You will always be welcome, you will be met with a smile and a greeting. In the end, when the illusions of possessions, wealth and status are faded....all we have in this world that is truly worth a damn is each other. Love each other and make tomorrow better than today.

Paul Kane

http://paul-kane.weebly.com/


This is my website. Please visit and let me know what you think.

What's he building

Self Respect

I was thinking lately about social networking sites and the people dying for attention that use them. A lot of people are aware of the terrible videos out there like 2 girls and 1 cup, the pain Olympics and more. People search on the Internet for people showing themselves in the worst light. Fighting, drunk, hurting themselves and it is all in the name of what?

What are we becoming? Where is our Fucking pride? Where are our heroes gone?

You wouldn't ever have seen Maureen O'Hara on reality TV, Humphrey Bogart getting his cock out in a film. Steve McQueen and John Wayne never once used the "F" word in a movie. They didn't need to. It seems these days movies are obliged to have tits, ass and sex in them. What happened to story telling?

I think that it wont ever matter what I write on a blog, but I just encourage anyone who leads from the front, by example to show some self respect and really set a good example for our children.

the State of the place

Enda Kenny and his team mark 100 days in office and they are all business. But 100 days of what? Nothing has really changed. Small towns like Roscommon are hurting and there are little signs of recovery. Quite the opposite, Empty shop units, bad roads, people leaving for new countries. Young people leaving education have no prospects here in Ireland and our own job resource The Fas are advertising jobs in Norway, Germany, Canada, USA and New Zealand to help you piss off out of the country and not come back.

I heard Kenny say it is not a politicians place to create employment. Yet Michael Lowry is the voice of this new Casino in Tipp. I suppose the job of Fine Gael right now is to get as many people out of the country and so off the dole as possible by making it impossible to live here. The closing of fundamental needs like hospital accident and emergency units around the country are positive proof of that.

Thanks very fucking much.