When we called on mum to take her to breakfast it was obvious that she had become more unwell overnight. She could hardly stand up so we helped her to the breakfast room where she enjoyed her breakfast. We were also pleased to find that the other member of our party had recovered overnight.

After breakfast we made the sad decision to take mum home because she had the early symptoms of another UTI infection.

We were disappointed not to be able to take part in the Easter Morning service in Lincoln Cathedral which was meant to be one of the treats for mum’s birthday.

Back home, we dialled 111 who assessed that mum should attend a critical care appointment in the local hospital within two hours and that they had called ahead to tell the hospital to expect her arrival. However, we found that our local hospital insists that everyone should go through the hospital’s own triage nurses. The triage system labelled her as coming in with vertigo and downgraded her to non-urgent despite us telling them that we suspected she had a UTI and the consequences that we know lead from that.

Mum had a few preliminary tests to rule out a few things and then we sat and waited watching many people come and go. Nine hours later, only mum and another lady, who had been admitted for an orthopaedic problem, remained from the original intakes.

Nine hours was too much for a 91-year-old lady so she decided she wanted to go home but first needed a nurse to remove a canula from her arm. The nurse went to check what was going on and advised that mum was next in the queue and gave an approximate time unless it was bumped by ambulance admissions.

The doctor who saw her was amazing. He talked to mum, assessed and listened to her concerns and accepted that she hadn’t come in with vertigo. From the tests he concluded that she had a UTI infection and, due to frailty, admitted her into hospital for what was left of the night.

This was a relief for me because I knew what would come next…