A bereaved daughter who was unable to be at her mother's deathbed says Boris Johnson's lockdown partying "makes my blood boil".
Rachel Dickinson says she and her family were robbed of precious time with Anne Cragg, 71, in the months leading up to the retired teacher's death because they abided by lockdown restrictions. At the same time, there were multiple parties in No10 Downing Street, including one which led to a fixed penalty fine for the then prime minister.
Anne, who had already survived breast cancer, started to complain of horrific stomach pain in April 2021, but it was not until a few days before her death that she was told she had a large cancerous mass in her pelvis. She died with none of her family at her side in hospital.
Rachel, 49, told the Mirror that she believes that if her mother had been seen by a doctor earlier, she might still be alive, or at least had longer to live. Because of limited access to GPs, she had to wait for months for an initial consultation.
And it still haunts her, almost two years later, that she was robbed of precious time with her mother in the final stages of her life while Boris Johnson and his friends and staff partied at No 10. "The thought that Boris Johnson was partying, whilst I was staying away from my mum makes my blood boil," Rachel said.
"I can never get that time back again. He believes he is above the law. He is laughing in the face of all of us."
Anne, a retired teacher from Littleborough, Greater Manchester, started to become unwell with an ongoing urinary tract infection (UTI) in April 2021.
She had a couple of telephone consultations with the advanced nurse practitioner at Littleborough Group Practice and was prescribed antibiotics. But as her condition worsened, she was unable to sit down or lie down, was struggling to eat, and complained of chronic stomach pain, which led her to visit A&E twice.
"She stopped being able to walk a lot, she was just slowing down," Rachel recalled. "My mum wasn't someone to go to the doctor at the drop of a hat, we knew it must have been bad for her to contact the GP."
Because Anne had a history of stage three breast cancer, the family thought she would have been referred immediately. Rachel's dad, Anthony, fought for her to be treated and she was finally seen by a GP on July 13.
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By August, Anne was referred to the Clinical Assessment Unit at Rochdale Hospital and was then booked in for a scan on August 14 at Fairfield Hospital in Bury. It was at this appointment that Rachel, a primary school teacher who lives in Wigan, realised just how unwell her mother was.
They had barely seen each other amid coronavirus restrictions and had only spent one day together in July at her niece's birthday outdoors. They kept in touch over the phone, but eventually, Anne didn't have the energy to speak.
"I hadn't realised how ill she was. She probably used every last bit of energy to try and be like herself - to be the strong one, the mum," Rachel said.
A week later, Anne collapsed at home and fell down the stairs. At this point, test results came back from the scan, showing there was a mass in her pelvis. She was admitted back to Rochdale Hospital and was discharged three days later.
But Anne deteriorated to the point she could not even swallow the painkilling morphine she was prescribed, and she was admitted back to Fairfield on August 31. It was here that the family was told that the mass was cancerous, and had spread across her body.
They had arranged at-home hospice care and waited for her to return home three days later, but she never arrived. Anne died on Friday, September 3.
"We never got the chance to arrive at her bedside to say our goodbyes. She had to leave this world alone," Rachel said. "I felt so guilty because I don't understand why I didn't sit with her in hospital whilst we waited for the ambulance. That is my biggest regret."
Rachel says they don't even know if her mum died peacefully, as she claims there were no medical notes for the last four hours of her life - which she says the hospital put down to untrained agency staff.
"We weren't informed that she was slowly leaving us," Rachel said. "We couldn't find out if she was at peace. That is the closure we needed that we didn't have."
On Wednesday, Johnson was grilled by the Commons Privileges Committee, which is investigating whether he deliberately misled MPs over lockdown gatherings.
He strongly defended multiple lockdown events as having been "essential", including one where he was pictured raising a glass at a leaving do. He admitted on social distancing guidance: "I’m not going to pretend that it was enforced rigidly."
By contrast, Anne and her family missed out on her planned golden wedding anniversary party because it was cancelled because of lockdown. They never had the chance to reschedule it because of her illness.
"Even when visiting my mum in her final days with us, we were still sticking to covid rules by wearing masks at her bedside," Rachel reflected. "I didn't see Boris Johnson wearing a mask at his party.
"What has made losing my mum harder than anything is the fact that it happened in the middle of the lockdowns. We had hardly spent a lot of time with her before she became ill because we were following the rules and not visiting each other. This haunts me to this day."
Rachel has filed a formal complaint to the Northern Care Alliance (NCA) over Anne's care and is now taking her complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.
Both the NCA and Littleborough General Practice declined to comment when approached by the Mirror.
Dr Vicki Howarth, medical director at Fairfield General Hospital, an NCA hospital, said: "We apologise for any distress caused when our communication standards fell below what our patients and their loved ones should expect to receive. We have sent a detailed response to the concerns raised but we'll also get in touch should they wish to discuss any aspect further."
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