Yet another NHS nightmare. My mother's care home contacted me to say she'd been taken to the Royal Derby Hospital by ambulance. When I finally managed to get through on the phone, the RD said she wasn't on the admissions computer. This was the start of a TWO-DAY search for her by myself and the care home staff.

It turned out that the ambulance had been diverted from the RD to another hospital, but no one at the RD had made a record of that, or where she had been diverted to, so we tried Queen's Medical and Burton Hospitals before finally tracking her down in the Chesterfield. All this took two days because of the number of times the phones rang out, or we were cut off after the call was answered.

In addition, I even tried the East Midlands' Ambulance Service, thinking they'd have records of where she'd been taken. I phoned them and it turned out they did, but they wouldn't tell me due to patient confidentiality. The woman on the phone said I'd have to fill in an application form and email it to them along with a scan of my POA. I told her my mother would be on a tray in the morgue by the time they received that. She told me she was sorry, but it was protocol.

When I finally got through to the Durrant Ward in Chesterfield, the nurses and doctor were lovely and very willing to talk and give me a full run-down on mum's health condition. Five stars to them.

The one star is for what is now a normal situation with NHS hospital admissions: if you don't go to the hospital with your relative, you can count on having to wait at least 24 hours before you can even find out where they are, let alone their condition. It was the same in April, when I didn't know if my mum was alive or dead for 24 hours after being sent to the Royal Derby with a suspected stroke. It seems that whoever should be notifying relatives or care home staff of the location of the admitted patient aren't bothering to do it, which is disgusting. We shouldn't have to act as detectives trying to track down where patients are.