Health Minister Simeon Brown claims there is no emergency in our hospitals – I just spent 8 days inside – this is what I witnessed
The Health Minister keeps telling us that his underfunding of health in favour of private interests is not causing any emergency inside our Public Hospitals. I just spent 8 days inside Auckland Hospital.
This is what I witnessed.
Doh!
It all started on the afternoon of Tuesday 11th.
I have a very regimented process on Tuesday’s for the Podcast.
I script, contact all the podcast guests for The Bradbury Group, send studio notes, stakeholder updates while squeezing in my 10 000 steps per day alongside trying to read a chapter from 5 books each day.
My current reading list is:
- Thomas Piketty – Capital
- Pawn of Prophecy – David Eddings
- Krondor the Betrayal – Raymond E Feist
- Comrade: Bill Andersen – A Communist, Working-Class Life – Cybèle Locke
- Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson
I’m walking home at around 5pm getting ready to uber into Mediaworks to film, but I’m not paying attention.
My mind is full of the permutations of what my court case against Ani O’Brien is causing.
I’ve stated boldly that I will go to prison for Free Speech, which is true, but I’m a solo dad and I don’t WANT to go to prison and I’m busy trying to work out what that all means if I do go inside for 6 months.
Ani works at the Taxpayer’s Union ‘Campaign Company’ who provide strategy for right wing candidates.
If I allow a precedent to silence political criticism by misusing the Harmful Digital Communications Act then it will be a mere matter of time before that becomes a stock standard tactic used by the Right to silence anyone who criticises them multiple times.
That is a precedence I simply can not allow to be created.
I’m so lost in thought that I don’t pay attention, and for the first time in my life, I really trip and fall over unlike anything I’ve ever done before.
I land flat on my face.
I bash up my nose, cut my chin and my teeth cut the inside of my lips, but it’s my rib cage on the left hand side that explodes in blinding pain.
I’m fortunate that a couple walking their dog rush over to help me and stop any bus from running me over as I lie on the road. I thank them and catch my breath.
The pain in my ribcage is beyond anything I’ve ever had, but the show must go on and after cleaning my face from blood I went into the studio and did the podcast live. I think it’s pure adrenaline that keeps me from fainting during that episode.
Afterwards I take painkillers and get very little sleep.
The next day I try to find a GP to go and see but you can’t find them for love or money in Auckland. I ask Chatty G about the difference between bruised ribs and broken ribs and Chatty tells me there is little difference in knowing for sure and the treatment is pretty much the same, you just have to wait for them to heal.
The pain doesn’t get worse, but it doesn’t get any better either. I can’t find a GP and so I soldier on.
I think as men we strive to endure and we don’t listen to our bodies when we are hurt. This is a grave and stupid decision that I would very much regret 1 week later.
Panic at the Disco (somebody saved my life tonight)
It’s Tuesday 18th and I’m excited about the show.
My ribs still hurt, but I push through it. We have Māori Party Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer on to discuss their unique candidate only strategy, we also have Stephen Franks from the Free Speech Union on to discuss the Harmful Digital Communications Act and the political panel is John Minto, John Tamihere and Matthew Tukaki.
I have put the final touches to the show, I am getting ready to go in to the studio and suddenly I start feeling very light headed.
I’m clammy, my breath starts becoming very ragged and I feel like an enormous diarrhoea episode is about to hit. I rush to the toilet and to my horror, I start haemorrhaging blood.
One bout of exploding blood, followed by another and then a third.
I don’t understand what the hell is happening.
I try to stand, but the dizziness becomes overwhelming.
I start to fall.
I reach out to grab something, anything to stop my collapse. I grasp the shower curtain and it rips raining shards of plastic onto me as I hit the floor of my bathroom.
Everything turns to black and I lose consciousness.
I come to with every red light flashing and every emergency klaxon inside my brain screaming.
This has hit so suddenly I’m not sure what is happening.
I’m confused, light headed, slick with blood and the black morass of unconsciousness behind my eyes like a Dementor in flight has a gravity to it that makes me feel like I’m going to black out again.
I think I’m sleeping and that this is a nightmare.
My muscles aren’t working, nothing is making sense and the Dementor of unconsciousness slowly pulls me closer and closer.
Then, above the confusion and the chaos inside my head come two very clear voices that cut through all the din.
The first tells me I’ve lost maybe a litre of blood and that if I pass out again I will continue bleeding out, go into shock and die.
The second voice tells me the person who will find me like this is my daughter.
The horror, the pure horror of my beloved girl walking in to find me in this state suddenly jolts me, forces me to get up. I can not, can not, can not leave her with that.
I can’t.
My muscles start working, I stagger to my feet and grab my phone.
My fingers are too slick with blood to get the damned screen to open, but it finally does and I hit the emergency call.
It asks me to select what service I want but I can’t work the keypad and just start shouting ‘Ambulance’ in the hope that will work.
It does.
I tell the dispatcher over and over my address, my name, what is happening and to send an ambulance immediately as I think I’m going to pass out again.
She tells me there are no ambulances available.
When you are panicking and aiming for a goalpost in desperation, having that desperation moved suddenly generates an anger mixed with despair, but the dispatcher keeps tailing to me, keeping me present, telling me to slow my breathing.
I can’t wait to pass out so I crawl down my stairwell and sit at the bottom step, bleeding out in the dark as the dispatcher keeps talking to me.
My vision suddenly dulls the way your screen does when it goes into low power mode, I feel incredibly cold and I’m on the constant verge of blacking out.
The dispatcher keeps talking to me, keeps me in the moment.
Afterwards I check my phone record.
It took 36 minutes before the ambulance arrives.
That dispatcher saved my life that night.
Inside the Belly of the Priest
When you are waiting for an ambulance, time drags and holds its breath.
When you finally hear the sirens getting closer, you breath again.
The Ambulance staff are amazing. They see the blood loss, see my low blood pressure and weak heart and they drive me immediately to the Emergency Ward.
I’m lifted by many hands and am staring straight up as I am wheeled down corridors.
There is an immediate blood transfusion. The Drs are trying to explain things to me but my gaze keeps shifting above them to the ceiling where there are 4 tiny Ok Kitty cartoon stickers, like children’s scratchings in a sterile triage that somehow seem very comforting.
I am X-rayed and my ‘bruised ribs’ turn out to be 3 broken ribs.
To the left of me a woman cries out in agony as the staff move her, to the right of me a woman screams no one has the legal right to touch her.
I am moved to a room to stabilise. I text people to let them know what has happened. I fall asleep and have terrible dreams.
Room mates
In my ward there is a homeless patient directly across from me. The nurses in hushed voices are trying to work out where he can go once they release him.
There is no where for him to go and they are increasingly anxious that the street is where he will end up.
He has sad eyes like a dog that has been been beat too much.
The reverence he shows each meal turns my face away in shame.
Next to him is a Kuia in a terrible state of pain. Every rasp is suffering, she is like a constant surf of ache. The only let up in her anguish is when family visit.
Next to me is a Māori couple from the Far North.
She laughs at everything, he is always upbeat.
They have been waiting 2 weeks for endless postponed surgery.
He gets many phone calls from whanau, they are frustrated at why it’s taking so long.
They are told there will be another postponement and are shown brochures of where family can stay in Auckland for only $20 a night.
He says, “It’s like Ronald McDonald House but not so flash”.
She isn’t laughing anymore.
She leaves him reluctantly and he listens to classic rock playing American Pie over and over again.
Through out all this suffering, the nurses are incredible.
Bone Tired
The staff are fucking heroes.
From the dispatcher, to the ambulance drivers, to the orderlies, to the nurses, to the drs to the medical techs drawing blood.
But working in a space filled with pain and injury and illness day in and day out is beyond me.
Their compassion is only matched by the bone tiredness in everyone I see.
From the Dr who has to leave in the middle of talking to me because they are also on the resuscitation team, only to return and try to begin their consultation with me again (this happens twice).
The Blood technician who has to skip lunch. The nurses who are so swamped with work, even the emergency helicopter staff – EVERYONE is over worked and under resourced.
You can see the frisson of exhaustion at their edges. How they manage to bring compassion and professionalism in such pressure cooker environments is utterly beyond me.
This isn’t a job, it’s a vocation and the manner in which they have all been collectively betrayed by this Government sickens me to my core.
Learnings
These public health workers are the very best of us.
They work tirelessly to fight for us when we are at our most vulnerable.
Our obligation as citizens is to ensure their interest are not only protected but expanded.
This Government has underfunded public health while cutting sweet heart deals for the private sector.
DON’T TELL ME WE DON’T HAVE THE MONEY!
They have $14 billion for tax cuts we couldn’t afford, they have $3billion for landlord tax loop holes, $300million for big tobacco, $200million for gas and oil subsidies, they even had $6million for wanky food stars from a French tyre company.
If you vote National, ACT or NZF, you are spitting in the faces of every single public health worker.
Health Minister Simeon Brown claims there is no emergency in our hospitals.
He’s lying to you…
North Shore Hospital ED nurses declare ‘state of emergency’ amid overcrowding
Nurses at Auckland’s North Shore Hospital have declared a “state of emergency”, saying chronic understaffing and severe overcrowding are putting patients at risk and leaving some waiting more than 50 hours in the emergency department.
Over 100 nurses, healthcare assistants and other ED staff signed a letter to Health NZ chief executive Dr Dale Bramley last week, saying they could “no longer remain silent” about conditions in the department.
Stuff
…on personal level I have been overwhelmed by the huge numbers of people who have reached out with love, their generosity and good will have meant more than I could ever articulate.
I am back thanks to the public health system and I will be relentless in seeing this Government gone.
Independent Media is more important than ever, especially in the lead up to the Election. TDB is the largest Left Wing Blog in NZ and we have been operating for 13 years. We get zero funding from NZonAir and we don’t have no rich backers. If you can donate please do so here or directly into our account –12-3065-0133561-56
I shot the sheriff,
but I did not shoot the deputy!
nz jail’s not that bad bro
government sponsored holiday camp
you might get beat up once for telling a senior gangster to “mind his own business”
or you might have fun disseminating Murray Rothbards “The anatomy of the state” or Lew Rockwells “The Left, The Right, and the State” with the Black Power gang.
you could also hang out with PhD Weatherston, Scott Watson and Raymond Ratima and have fun poking holes in the logic of Corrections and how the reintegration programs are intel gathering exercises.
you’ll be okay
Get well Martyn. I can imagine the shock and trauma you’ve suffered. TG for our health service, life savers.
There is no more money left in NZ’s economic reserves for health bomber, it was blown all at once on a virus in 2022-2023 that affected only septuagenarians and older. The money should have been spent on isolating and treating only those at risk (i.e. using the medico-scientific method and the Hippocratic oath rather than the coercion and forced medication as was fashionable at the time) while creating a world-leading sustainable and affordable health system. It’s a lesson in how not to administer the health sector, because treatments for chronic disease for many today exist only in the emergency room of a hospital, where some even succumb to their illness while waiting to be seen (contrast this with the untold numbers of dancing nurses and serious syringe doctors just gagging to see people in the 2022-2023 event, where the urgency was just amazing).
They find money for other things and this is simply a matter of shifting money from other things. How much is going into the planes and other war junk.
That sounds terrifying, Bomber. Having spent half of December in hospital over two stays (including Christmas), and waiting for an operation, I too can attest the nursing staff are wonderful. The nursing aides were rays of sunshine. The cleaners efficient but under time pressure and so trying to respect patient’s space. The doctors, I found, have too many patients, so they don’t get to know you well. They also are under resourced as far as operating theatres go. My first stay, I got my operation the morning after I was admitted. The second stay it was five days nil by mouth until I got my operation – it should have been done on Christmas Day, but it happened on Boxing Day in the end… then there were days more of antibiotics. District nurses were awesome too. In all, I was in the system from Nov 30 to March 8 – and it was personally traumatic but, as much as the system is under funded/resourced/staffed, I was cared for well.
Makes me cry to read this. I’m a nurse in an Auckland hospital and my colleagues are riskng their health and jobs to turn up to chaos where they have little time to think, just act on autopilot. I have seen multiple terrible situations from the lack of beds and staff. Very vulnerable patients begging for assistance. So sorry that Martyn and so many others have had to go through this because the government is ignorant cruel callous and only care about numbers in a book and paying more to the wealthy. Absolutely disgusting..
Welcome back Bomber.
The fight against these bastards just isn’t the same without you.
Of course Brown doesn’t see the mayhem and carnage that inflicts our public health system or see first hand what courage and commitment that our nurses and other critical staff give of themselves every day because he and many of his entitled colleagues goes private if they need medical treatment.
Of course the threat of privatization is still very much on the agenda. Shipley and her government tried to further the same reforms started by Richardson and were voted out.
Take care and recover comrade.
Sh*tty story. Good writing. Good luck.
We are definitely 3rd World however it could be worse. Problem solved when Simeon privatises the Healthcare System ???
Good to see you back on deck Bomber. But keep in mind, recovery from a serious physical trauma can be 2 steps back for every 3 steps forward. Make sure you pace yourself, and rest enough to keep your recovery on track.
Also, I agree 100% that our public health staff are heroes, and they deserve far better working conditions.
” I am back thanks to the public health system and I will be relentless in seeing this Government gone.”
Well, the thing we think of as our government isn’t governance though is it. What is it, one might ask? Well, who gives a fuck I would say. We just need to get rid of it and I think, in fact I know, we can but we need outside help. Our entire politic is corrupt now. There’s no one to lead the charge with honour and a brave heart
Can you do us a favour and send your most excellent letter equally to the Crown at Whitehall, to the governor general and to The Guardian. You wield great power @ Bomber. You’ve achieved great things. You now have many eyes focused on the enemy. Use it. Pound the fuckers into the excrement of their own doings. Weaponise your injuries to good use. Make little simeon brown squeak. Show our politics as the corrupt cartel of dull *mafioso it is.
* The word comes from the Sicilian noun mafiusu, which means boldness, bravado, or swagger. In the 19th century, it described a man who showed fearlessness and pride.
Does that sound like luxon? A swaggering deodorant salesperson from Timaru who’s proud of the fact that he’s the PM of a cadre of useless, uncaring neoliberal riche hangers on whom we must pay to harm us.
I know ! Let’s ask chris hipkins? ( Is that crickets I can hear…? )
I am happy you are on the mend – lucky for you in were in the Auckland City Hospital…Middlemore Hospital is far more busy.
Written from the heart.
You are a very lucky man to be here to carry on the fight. We are lucky people to have you still.
Please pass on our best wishes to your daughter. You have mentioned her before, always with great love and appreciation.
It’s my daughter’s birthday today so I know how you feel about her.
Over the years I’ve had a lot of conversations with ambulance despatchers and found them to be remarkably kind and sensible. This was for my husband who has a chronic and serious condition which lays him low at times.
Our public health system and the workers are a treasure, a toanga, to be cherished and nurtured.
S. Brown has no respect for it or us. He is like an abusive parent, we can’t get away from him, and he is free to continue his crimes. His deliberately cruel mismanagement of public health is in my mind, a treasonous crime.
Ouch I have had cracked ribs twice and slept almost sitting up some nights. Complete recovery is 6 months.
If people are not voting for a party that has announced substantial tax increases at the top end then they are bloody irresponsible. It is not only our health system that needs billions more but education, housing and a long list would follow. Labour are pathetic, so weak, so constantly on the back foot, crawling to victory while offering so little. I have to make my doctor’s appointments at least 6 weeks in advance.
I agree. This Government must go. As does NZF and bloody ACT. But Labour doesn’t seem to have the answer. There has to be different system to govern our country.
“I try to find a GP to go and see but you can’t find them for love or money in Auckland.”
So true. Our Doctor recently retired and her former practise now only offers nurses. Our family is ill and have tried getting a Doc appointment this week. One receptionist laughed and said we could get an appointment in a year. Another indicated we need to plan our illnesses at least three weeks in advance.
That surely can’t be the norm. Where I go it takes no more than a day or two, and that is because of the flu. Normally the same day. A well run and busy practice.
Good to see Martyn has found the health service on hospital, effective and competent. As I have seen a a bit this year. Well organised. Busy, but not run off their feet.
I also think Nationals commitment to reduce spending to 30% is unrealistic. Not when health budgets are going to increase along with superannuation. They are wanting to spend 10% less than currently, as a percentage of GDP. Can’t be done with an aging population.
Depends where you live. You must be lucky (or rich) Wayne.
Our typical wait time for the next appointment has increased to over 2 weeks. There’s also a “walk in” clinic where you can wait for several hours until the triage nurse can find a free Doctor, but otherwise you need to schedule your illnesses weeks in advance.
Good thing our medical system is so efficient now: the Doctor’s don’t have a single minute to spare.
The nurse conundrum
Finding a job without any prior work experience creates a major conundrum for recent graduates.
No jobs for recent graduates.
Visas for imported 3rd world country nurses.
Export of kiwi nurses to Aus and other wealthier countries.
NZ trains enough nurses at public expense but the staff shortage on the wards is not solved.
Australia’s stolen nurse scheme
https://pnqk.me/th5xwc
How come we have politicians enabling nurse theft by those bribing aussies?
Correct, most employment vacancies advertise for at least 1 years experience. Well fuck me how do you gain experience without being employed and no, volunteering no longer pays the horrendous cost to live under Nationals economy. Once you could volunteer if your partner worked, but that statement is now a joke.
Very backward country NZ IMHO ???
That’s what happens when you let Bankers and Soap Salesmen run the Country and we have an Opposition Party who sits on its hands and does nothing apart from wringing it’s hands and complaining about the other Parties and their people.
One of your best pieces, Martyn. Best wishes for a full recovery.
A genuine first-hand experience Bomber.
It makes one feel both sad and happy at the same time.
Sad because this is NZ, a place where once our medical facilities were as good as any other country, and in most instances a whole lot better, but are now scarcely better than a DRC hospital during an ebola outbreak.
Happy because we know that, despite all odds and everything this miserable right wing government can throw at them, the people who work there do their darnedest best to do it well.
I know from experience just how debilitating rib injuries are. They can take a year to fully heal and even after that you can still feel the effects when you cough or sneeze. I don’t wish them on anybody.
Good luck Bomber, I hope you recover well and can use this experience to tell the sheeple just what it is we have now masquerading as a “public health system.
Get better Bradbury God Help we need you !!!
In the 1970’s NZ was ranked in the Top 5 Countries in the World, I think we are now 35th.
NZ Politicians and Business Leaders have stuffed this Country IMHO.