Hello, my name is Monica Barnes, I’m known as Peggy, and today (9/1/2013) is my 70^th birthday.

 

I’ve been registered disabled since 1989 since been made disabled in August 1987, and I am seeking a Ghost Writer to write about the past agonising 25-years of my life.

 

I live in South Anston, Sheffield S25 5HA and I have suffered wilful (yes Wilful) medical injury at the hands of our NHS providers since 1987. You just wouldn’t believe it.

 

My quality of life for the past 25-years has been considerably reduced and over the on-coming weeks I intend revealing my case to you stage by stage here, on my Blogg. I also intend putting it on YouTube.

 

Over the years my husband has made hundreds of sound recordings of consultations with medical experts, doctors, surgeons, solicitors and Barristers alike. So-called Medical Experts have colluded with the defendants to scupper my case. You can hear for yourselves what solicitors and consultants have said over the years. It’s unbelievable.

 

One Judge, Lord Justice Mantel, actually said in Court that he was there to save HNS money. My husband told him that he thought he was there to administer justice. One solicitor (Mr Michael Pringsheim) who was not involved but had sat in on the case, told us that as soon as the judge opened his mouth he knew I was going to be stitched-up. He subsequently examined my file of papers and advised me that neither the solicitors nor the judiciary had adhered to procedure in my case.

 

I will be revealing not only what has happened to me due to mal-treatment by medics but also what has happened to me, and could clearly happen to you, with solicitors when pursuing a case of clinical negligence against our so-called medical professionals.

 

The recent public enquiry regarding the Staffordshire hospital;

I have heart felt sympathy for those patients and relatives whose loved ones have suffered dreadfully at the hands of our so-called medical professionals who have played their part in this barbaric treatment of patients.

 

The Staffordshire case is about one particular hospital with many complaints coming from numerous patients, where my case is about one patient having numerous complaints against numerous hospitals.

 

 

I do however hold nurses and medical staff in high regard where they have whistle-blown and then come up against bullying from their colleagues, those we have trusted and who should know better.

 

 

One classic example is them letting elderly patients fall out of bed. It’s one sure way of them increasing bed capacity at the expense of shortening the lives of the elderly.

 

I think most of you will agree that really we’ve all known it’s been going on for years but have been able to do little or nothing about this NHS barbaric back-covering culture. The NHS and Department of Health have just not been interested in tackling it albeit they have known about it. Lord Woolfe, in 1998 in his Clinical Negligence Reforms Forum at 1.4, says he recognises that medics close ranks when a claim is made against a colleague.

 

 

My problem started with Orthopaedic Surgeon Mr Pratif Majumdar in August 1987 when he inappropriately removed my Right knee-cap (patella) in a privately paid for operation in August 1987 and when it was actually a bony lesion in my right knee joint causing my deep-seated pain from having recurrent dislocations of the patella.

 

I became crippled after having that operation. At around the same period of time he did exactly the same to a police woman who lived in Tickhill near Doncaster, and she subsequently entered Majumdar into litigation.

 

I first came up against hostilities with Mr Majumdar when I attended his clinic at the Rotherham District General Hospital in November 1987. I’d returned to his clinic after been referred by Majumdar to see Orthopaedic Surgeon Mr David Dandy in Cambridge in a private capacity, for a second opinion.

 

Dandy had advised me and my husband, after my spending 4-days having treatment by Dandy at a private hospital in Cambridge, and him identifying the area in my knee giving rise to the pain, that he did not recommend any further operation on my knee at that time. He wrote to Majumdar accordingly. He advised me that he had never ever seen the results of a patellectomy in a condition like I’d been left in.

 

As I was saying, the first sign of any hostility from medics was when I returned to Majumdar’s clinic at the RDGH in November 1987. Majumdar read-out the letter from Dandy where he did not recommend surgery, he turned to me and my husband and in his next breath he asked me to come into the hospital for further surgery, which I declined due to what Dandy had advised and what he had just read out to me in the letter from Dandy. Majumdar, without any hesitation, said “then get out of my “Fxxx ing hospital”. He used the full word. We were astonished at his attitude. He just turned on his heels and left the consulting room.

 

The nurse in attendance was gob-smacked and recommended that I refer the matter to Ms Heather O’Donnell, the Administrator of the hospital. Heather O’Donnell advised me to instruct a solicitor and they would not stand in my way she said. She suggested Irwin Mitchell. Ms Heather O’Donnell, from what I understand, is currently working at the Sheffield Teaching Hospital.

 

What she didn’t tell me however (and this did not get revealed until much much later) was that Majumdar was instructed by Irwin Mitchell from time to time to provide them with medical reports in clinical negligence cases.

 

In February 1989 Dandy referred me onto Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridge where I had Pain Management treatment on a weekly basis for about six-months. The knee problem got worse, and I was then referred back to Dandy in November 1989 where on 29^th November he performed open surgery on my knee but matters got worse because he failed to remove the bony lesion. I will explain later.

 

In his clinic notes for 27 March 1990 Dandy correctly diagnosed my knee problem as being due to the bony lesion. But when he became aware of litigation against Majumdar he covered Majumdar’s back. He took my husband onto one side and told him that I had a mind problem not a knee problem. Meaning I should not have entered Majumdar (his colleague) into litigation, and in May 1990 he referred me back to my GP as requiring a psychiatrist. The bony lesion was not removed from my knee until November 2002 but by that time much more damage had been done.

 

I’ve skip a bit; on 9^th January 1990 my Right knee locked solid in the flexed position and I was unable to straighten my leg. I was not aware of the exact problem at the time but the bony lesion had locked my knee joint. I was taken to the Sheffield Northern General A/E where they took x-rays and admitted me onto a ward for treatment. This was around 11am. They advised me that I was going to have my knee manipulated whilst under a general anaesthetic. My husband returned home to collect various items that I would require for my stay in hospital.

 

I was not allowed anything to eat or drink nor was I administered any pain killers or pain killing injections due to the intended procedure. However, a short while later a Mr Saleh (Orthopaedic Surgeon) came onto the ward. He read my notes and obviously, from what happened next, he had become aware from my notes of the pending litigation against his colleague Mr Majumdar. He had me turn onto my tummy and he placed one hand on the back of my Right thigh and proceeded to manually straighten my leg. I screamed in shear agony.

 

When I relayed this information to my solicitor (Mr Gillott at Irwin Mitchell solicitors) a few weeks later, I see that he wrote in his Attendance Notes that Mr Saleh had come onto the ward and pulled my leg. As if it had been a joke!

 

Since then I’ve been refused numerous referrals from my GP to consultants, and where they have agreed to see me they have covered their colleagues’ backs.

 

It’s reported in my GP records that “Elson says No-Thanks. It’s reported that Hunter at the Bassetlaw Hospital says “I would not therefore like to see this lady”.

 

More recently (May 2009) Mr Blundell at the Sheffield Teachings Hospital refused to see me when I was referred to him by my GP/ Mr Paul Cooke in Oxford. He wrote to my GP saying that he was aware of my past history and didn’t’ want to go the same way as his colleagues.

 

In November 1993, instead of advising me of the bony lesion being the cause of my knee pain Mr Verinder at the Dukeries clinic diagnosed me as suffering from the controversial RSD syndrome and referred me onto a Dr Renshaw who referred me onto himself at the Bassetlaw Hospital for Pain Management treatment. It can be found in my notes where my GP referred him to the then ongoing litigation.

 

In November 1993 Renshaw negligently and inappropriately administered a Guanethidine Pain-Block injection directly into my Right foot, as opposed to a vein. I’ve since been advised that it should not have been injected into my foot for a pain in my knee in any event. It’s left me with severe crippling damage to my Right foot to this very day.

 

 I was even told by one orthopaedic surgeon Mr John King at Royal London Hospital who had at first wrote to my GP advising that I had not previously been properly diagnosed, when he learned about the then pending litigation he told me that I would have to learn to walk on my hands, meaning before anyone would offer me proper corrective treatment.

 

Consultant, Mr Giles at the RDGH on 11/12/2008, told me that if he were to treat me he would want to amputate my Right foot just below the knee.

 

I have seen dozens of Consultants across the country and have instructed above a dozen solicitors. One instructed solicitor (Mr Jonathan Brain) even prepared a Court Witness Statement for Orthopaedic Consultant Mr Zeraati at the Bassetlaw Hospital who was a named defendant on my Legal Aid Certificate.

 

Mr Brain even conspired with a solicitor at the Legal Aid Board in London (Ms Caroline Smiley) to have mail intended for my home address and for my information, diverted to his office address at Mills Kemp & Brown in Barnsley so as not to allow be know the status of my Legal Aid Certificate. Ms Smiley did say in a letter to me that it had been wrong in her so doing. I found a letter in his file addressed to me thanking me for informing the Legal Aid Board of my change of address.

 

At a point in the case where my husband questioned what Mr Brain was doing Mr Brain threw a very large Court Rules book at him at the same time telling my husband to do the bloody job himself if he thought he could do better. He had wanted me to sign a Statement of Truth on a Court Document basically saying that I believed my Claim was only worth a Thousand pounds. (As if!)

 

 

When I subsequently took on that particular part of my case as litigant in person Mr Brain wrote to the Law Costs Draftsman asking for a 70% uplift in his Legal Aid Bill of charges because, he said, he had found Mrs Barnes difficult to handle.

 

One judge, His Hon Judge Moore, Sheffield County Court, told me that I had a case for the Bassetlaw Hospital to answer then the next time I saw him in court he said he had changed his mind.

 

In a Report dated 10^th November 1998 by Mr Nigel Anderson, solicitor and also a Deputy Coroner, as made for the Office of Supervision of Solicitors in a case intended against Irwin Mitchell solicitors, Mr Anderson said, and I quote the following from his report.

 

5th paragraph of his report: "It is obvious to me that a number of doctors that have seen Mrs Barnes have shown no interest in her problem or have been generally hostile to her as soon as they found out that there has been a claim against a colleague of theirs". In the 5th paragraph he goes onto say, and I quote; "... I have never seen such hostility before as Is contained in some of the correspondence from the medical profession. By that I am judging their hostility by the contents of the letters that they have sent to each other and the problem that Mrs Barnes has clearly had getting straight answers from them. Therein lies the problem".

 

As I have said, you will not believe!!

 

When we’ve checked court files at the Barnsley Court we found mine to be a Ghost file in that nothing had been filed into court by the Defendant’s solicitors in the case. I was subsequently told by another residing Judge that District Judge Khan, who’d been residing over my case, had gone over the boarder, to Manchester.

 

Over the years I have managed to obtain all my solicitors files due to acting as litigant in person, and they make very informative reading. As I said earlier, I have hundreds of sound recordings so what I say I can also prove to be true, and I intend revealing names here!!

 

This true story continues …. Watch this space!!