A Dad’s POV on VSD

I cried again! I know, what am I like? The simple fact of the matter is, when you've struggled with something mentally for 3 years, in addition to other issues that have effected your mental health before that, adding to your mental health burden, to finally have a letter confirming and acknowledging you were right all along and failings in care did occur, it's an emotional moment! It's a great weight lifted. Our complaint to our hospital regarding the failures in care in Sebastian’s first 3 months has not only been received, but admission of said failings have been accepted! We are now in the process of arranging a meeting with some senior people there to discuss how to ensure such failings do not occur again and hopefully to convince them to accept a pulse oximetry machine that we’re willing to raise funds to purchase, and also to be willing to accept specific CHD training, again funded through the same charity, for their sonographers to help improve CHD diagnosis at

If you were an NHS hospital, especially one trying to drag yourself out of being a failing hospital put into special measures, and you were offered a free Pulse Oximetry Machine through someone offering to raise the funds to buy one, you'd be grateful, right? You'd welcome the opportunity to not spend money from your already over stretched budget, right? Being a hospital coming out of being put into special measures and having been rated poorly for the quality of your care, you'd certainly take the chance to give your staff the latest training and equipment so they could offer parents a simple, painless and relatively quick test to check for undiagnosed CHD in their newborn; thus improving the quality of your hospital's care.... right? Well, yes you would, dear reader, obviously, but that's because you're a rational person not in complete denial that the service you're offering is below par and failing in its basic remit, despite having been put into s