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Independent proprietor Sid Dajani recounts a particularly traumatic and emotional time

On the late afternoon of Monday, February 23 I got a call at my pharmacy that set a precedent for the biggest life-changing event of my life. We get calls from the hospital all the time about patients and their medication but it took a few moments to register that this time it was my dad that the doctor was talking about.

I have lived with and cared for him for over 18 years since his first strokes. I had spoken to him only a few hours earlier and he was fine. But it seemed that he collapsed while shopping; his heart had stopped and he turned blue.

Thankfully, an onsite guardian angel first aider revived him and he was ambulanced to Basingstoke Hospital. I got the call and called my brother and sisters who met me there. I was due to stay in Derby that night as I had a presentation the next morning.

The hospital was a shambles; due to understaffing they didn’t clean him up until we insisted we would do it ourselves at around 9pm, and then they couldn’t find himabeduntil2amastherewasnoroom– not even on the private ward. We left at around 2.30am. I collected his car from the supermarket car park, went home to get refreshed and then left at around 5am to get to Derby from Andover.

Temporary relief

I arrived with five minutes to spare, did the presentation and drove to London for a noon meeting I was due to chair. I made it back to the hospital at 7pm. I was exhausted but relieved he was alive and well, all things considered. I spent the whole of Wednesday with him and waited as he had his pacemaker fitted.

We were told a technician would see us about the aftercare, but we never saw one. We still hadn’t seen one when Dad was discharged the next day. We asked to speak to the pacemaker technician, but were given a leaflet instead.

I checked his medication for any changes and there was one. They had changed his statin because he had a leg pain. The leg pain was due to his fall four days earlier, not a side-effect, so clearly the right questions were not asked and no one was available to clear up that matter either.

But what got my hackles up was that, even though it was around 1pm, they had forgotten to give Dad his morning tablets – all five of them.

The sheets were signed but he definitely hadn’t taken them and the nurse said she got distracted. He took them and we left in haste, glad to get him home. On Friday and Saturday, Dad was fine as he recuperated from his op and we treated his ankle from the fall.

I finally relaxed a little as a sense of normality began to return and I went to work, to relieve and thank the emergency locum.

First aid in action

On Saturday night, Dad was in good cheer, but as the three of us helped him up from the dining room table he suddenly collapsed again as we got to the foot of the stairs. Every two years since 1998, I’ve attended a two-day comprehensive first aid course. The last one was only in November and I hadn’t forgotten a thing, which was reassuring.

I did emergency resuscitation and chest compressions as others cleared the area, called an ambulance and took care of my niece and nephews away from the developing trauma.

I cleared his airway a few times as we all spoke to him throughout with words of assurance, strength and love. I don’t know what he heard but we managed to revive him three times before he had another attack and stopped breathing again.

We carried on CPR until the ambulance crew arrived and ‘defibbed’ him three times. We carried on talking to him throughout but he showed no signs of life, not even when I tickled his feet – which he would normally have hated.

"Losing a parent is without doubt one episode in life that changes you as a person"

The jewel of his life, my baby sister, went into the ambulance with him. As I followed the ambulance and called other family members to pray for him as he fought for his life, something inside me told me it was his time and to let him go. He was declared dead at the hospital pretty much when we got there.

Acceptance and remembrance

Less than three weeks on, I'm just beginning to accept the painful reality that a pivotal piece of our lives is no longer with us and will be missing forever.

He was a non-conformist who was ridiculed for being the first non Tory- supporting surgeon in his hospital back in the70s.Hewasadoctorinthearmy,aTV doctor on a satellite station in the 90s, and he sometimes never charged his patients when they couldn’t afford it.

He was a Harley Street surgeon, a consultant registrar, a director of a private hospital, and a hard-working, humble, kind, loving and generous person. We have lost a fine example of a good man and while I have learned much from him, even while carrying his medical bag on house visits when I was five, I can never emulate or be half the man he was.

A hard gap to fill

Losing a parent is without doubt one episode in life that changes you as a person, especially if you were close. The realisation that there will never be another person there who will fill that gap leaves a hole that can never be filled.

The realisation of not hearing him again, and doing everything for the first time without him makes that gap even harder to fill than the Grand Canyon.

As we go on with great sadness and heavy hearts, we take strength in knowing when a good person dies, so much dies with them but not the goodness, respect or memories.