My Thoughts
with copies from the relevant documents
I DID attend many appointments with the counsellor, on Wednesdays afternoons, I cancelled a few appointments because I was SO busy. She told me that I should have just walked out the surgery, my reply was unprintable but basically was "it is MY business and my life"
I only remember seeing Dr S J.... ONCE when she was late and told me to "just walk away" I never expressed "suicidal thoughts" I SAID I did not want to be here, in this situation which is completely different. With hindsight I now see that NO ONE seemed to listen to ME.
"TALKED SERIOUSLY ABOUT SUICIDE" I can only say "HA!" I STILL break into tears these days 10 years later. I slept OK in fact BETTER than I do now. I needed 3 Alarms to get me up each morning. If I did tell him I found the consultations helpful it was because I thought he was listening, how wrong I was. AND also because the Counsellor wanted to talk about my sister and my up-bringing, none of which were relevant. It was not the last time that the "professional" did not listen to WHAT I SAID but acted on THEIR interpretation, of events
He says I am forgetful at work so was to send me this opinion by post the correct medical treatment? If the patients were sent home would I stay in the Practice for him to visit me? NO I would have gone home and he did not visit me at home, or did I forget, as in work?
SEE he said he KNEW about my "precarious financial situation" so surely he should have realised, that if I suddenly disappeared then this would have been the WORST thing possible I could have done.
Yet in the NHS Complaint Dr A said that he "relied on his memory and could not remember the name of the Consultant"
The NHS complaint REFUSED to accept the Medical Opinion as evidence saying it was NEW EVIDENCE and not admissible as such. It exists in my medical notes and has done SINCE 4th June 1998. He would have wasted no time telling people if he WAS exemplary
BUT NO indication that plans for my retirement were under way. BECAUSE the Medical Opinion would be the document that would be used to hospitalise me. But then I received his letter with the compliment slip, which PROVES he NEVER intended for me to learn the most important decision of my life "face to face". Is this Negligence/Malpractice? BUT re-read the quote above. He however expected me to deal with the closure and sale of the practice having deserted it for 6 weeks. Did he not consider the consequences of his actions?
If I was "too ill" to continue work at something that was now second nature almost after 20+ years would I be strong enough to deal with the formalities of early retirement? Dr A thought so. Please re-read the chaos surrounding retirement Not even the retirement proceedings with the NHS Pensions agency could be done properly
Attached was a compliment slip however. What was I supposed to read into his comments?
I received the letter from my wife AND communication from my divorce solicitor at the same time as his medical opinion.
And then I received this, from the Consultant in Heath House Priory on my discharge. dated 29th June 1999 ONE WHOLE YEAR LATER.
This was written at about the time my financial chaos, and now mental health, had hit the bottom and about the time the CSA got REALLY nasty about my missing six weeks and stoppage of payments to wife which ended with me getting a deductions of earnings order placed on me of £500 pcm. Anxious and depressed, are not quite how I would have described the hell of that last year or so, I would have used considerably stronger words. And I was dealing with all this whilst on a psychiatric drug, the name I forget. that made it IMPOSSIBLE to be strong and assertive, which was what was needed, like I could be BEFORE, AS I WAS trying to get my professional life back to some semblance of normality I have the floor pulled out from under me AND still NO explanation.
I was a high risk suicide with the stress of rebuilding my practice after a flood and hospitalised. THEN I was described as acutely anxious and distressed AFTER GOING THROUGH ALL THIS. having just seen the same practice I had worked so hard for from Jan to June 1998, and the REASON for my hospitalisation, just implode out of my control and with such ferocity and speed and then totally disappeared taking almost every thing with it. 40 years of my life, since going to university to read Dentistry in 1967,
ALL gone.
1998 from Dr A
Not even the retirement proceedings with the NHS Pensions agency could be done properly.
1999 from Heath House Priory.