Suzanne Williams

As I have had, in 2018, experience with Bupa’s treatment of the people in their care, I thought my tuppence-worth wouldn’t go amiss, although I can’t speak of Mary Shapley specifically.

I cared for my husband for seven years in the Far North and Thames after he had a stroke and was partially disabled. However, after he started falling over in the night, the ambulance officers got tired of picking him up for me and he entered one of the Bupa rest homes in Thames.

He had been walking daily with a walker, around the house and garden, up and down steps and stairs with a reasonable level of fitness and was exercising in bed; but the day he walked half a kilometre to his room and his bed at the rest home was the last day he ever walked or exercised.

I came the next morning to take him to a dentist’s appointment and was told, “Oh no, he can’t walk and we can’t help him to your car”; then “He must have had a small stroke last night” – and that was that. Whatever fuss I made, he spent his entire time there either in bed or a Lazyboy.

Also, they were so short-staffed that he would often wait an hour or more for attention after summoning it with a bell.

So, I then scoured the area between Auckland and Rotorua for somewhere else congenial to live, with a co-operative rest home willing to try to get him walking again.

I found Whakatāne, and Golden Pond, which had access to good physiotherapy for the residents, and a nice feel to the place, avoiding Mary Shapley, another Bupa home. However, unfortunately, by the time we sold our home, bought another and moved, it was too late for his body to recover its mobility.

He died after 18 months, during Covid lockdown.

Large profit-oriented corporates (dare I say it? – especially the Australian variety) are bound to consider their shareholders’ profits above all else, I guess.

We are seeing a similar situation as well now, with the supermarket monopolies and the very belated political reaction to them.