QMC Nottingham's not much better - THREE DAYS with no loo roll in one of the toilets, despite me reporting it endlessly, and some skanky git had put paper towels (the thought of using THEM to wipe with stitches is somewhat eyewatering - by this point hubby had brought me in Andrex and I was seen heading off up the corridor muttering "my preciousssss" in a way last seen on Lord of the Rings) down the loos and blocked them all... bloodied maternity pads left in the shower for days on end and ones left looking like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre had moved in.

Add in a couple of really unpleasant experiences with some staff who were about as seriously in the wrong job as it's possible to get - including forcing me to do nasal gastric tubefeeds that I'd said I was really uncomfortable doing, and the cow whom, when I'd checked the tube for a feed one morning and wasn't confident it was still in correctly, ignored the buzzer for 30 minutes solid while she sat there reading Heat magazine (I could see her doing it), then strolled in, said she wasn't going to help me - deal with it... couldn't feed the baby till the tube was in correctly either - that one ended up with another trip down to NICU to get someone with a molecule of compassion (and competence) to fit a new feeding tube.

I'm actually having to have counselling to get over the things that we went through in that hellhole - and have spent most of the day sobbing at the thought we might have to go back to the hospital again if the little one's hernia doesn't resolve itself - hubby's put his foot down and said we'd beg and plead to go anywhere else in the country if that happened.

Lost a very dear family friend (more of a father to me than just a family friends) to a hospital infection last year too.

Suffice to say I'm now developing a rather splendid hospital phobia after it all.

Oh and I forgot to add the three and a half hours spent begging for pain relief I had - leading to me having to do the entire labour on two chuffing paracetamol. No one was bothered by the pain I was in.

Try staying in a lead lined room, where no one is allowed to come in and clean, or even see you if you feel like crap (ohh, and they also forget to give you food and drinks, you can't leave for anything either)

The bathrooms were spotless during my stay too.

I did find quite a marked difference between being a day patient and an in patient though. On the day surgery ward there were lots of nurses and always someone available but as an in patient nurses were very scarce, I rarely saw one at all and waited hours to have my drip changed after the doctor authorised it. In fact he came back and did it himself in the end. Buzzers went unanswered until the entire ward was woken up too. Some things just amazed me, like being woken at midnight to be weighed in a wheelchair contraption Gawd knows why it was so important to weigh me that they had to wake me up to do it. For three days I couldn't even sit up in bed so they made me get up and sit in a chair, I felt so ill I made Iain help me back into bed.

As with most things in life there are good aspects and there are bad aspects, but as I've learnt over the last 5 years as an NHS Nurse, most people don't want to hear about the good aspects! Can't say much more than that really.

As with most things in life there are good aspects and there are bad aspects, but as I've learnt over the last 5 years as an NHS Nurse, most people don't want to hear about the good aspects! Can't say much more than that really.