NHS hospitals

This last week has been hell for my wife and I. We were given the bad news on monday that our child was suffering from a neural tube defect, and there was nothing that medical science could do. We could either continue to term and have it stillborn or abort. We opted for the abortion. We then had a 20 hr wait to sign the papers, then a 48 hr wait for the pill that begins the process to start working, and then another day for the whole process to complete.

I can say with certainty that those were the longest, slowest, saddest 4 days of my life. Apparently this type of thing happens more that many people (including us) realized - 2% of pregancies go wrong - or to put it another way 1 in 25 families with 2 children will have something from a miscarriage to our condition.

Luckily the procedure happened without a hitch and my wife is recovering. We await the corner's report to see what else the world has in store for us.

All of this happened at the John Radicliff in Oxford, and I would like to offer my thanks and admiration of the staff there who were superb getting us through a difficult time. Extra NHS attention and money certainly seems to have helped there, and I really appreciated it.

Hopefully next time we'll have better luck.