The Royal Free Hospital

• IT is 4.30 in the morning when my mum wakes up to get ready to go to the dialysis ward, satellite unit, of the Royal Free Hospital.

In her 70s, she’s one of the lucky ones, if you can say so about a woman who has been sick for nine years.

She lives not too far from the hospital so she doesn’t have to go through the gruelling process of claiming for transport.

Some patients have legs missing or serious underlying conditions like cancer. Many are young, and my mum has seen many die.

Despite this she makes the most of her day connected to a machine for four hours. For some people it is five.

Mum looks for positivity in any situation and strikes long conversations with people she has got to know over the years. The care of the nurses is beyond reproach.

Until three years ago the patients arriving in the morning would be greeted with two slices of toast and jam. They didn’t expect it but it helped, that kind gesture, in such a harsh reality.

At midday they would be given a small sandwich and cup a tea. In the afternoon two small packets of custard creams would cheer them up.

Then it started.

First the toast went. Then the sandwich. Then, unbelievably, one packet of biscuits.

Now, like a small mental torture, they are left with one packet containing three very small biscuits.

We know about shrinkflation. Yes, she can afford to buy her own. But that really isn’t the point.

I have read little about Florence Nightingale but I believe she was a great promoter of kindness as an essential part of care.

Surely a ham sandwich and a custard cream is not going to bankrupt the hospital trust.

But, hey, there is no end to the meanness in this world, or should I say this part of the world which is, let’s not forget, the richest.

The patients take their own food. They have to and they don’t complain. They’re too vulnerable and sick to do so. It just leaves my mum looking at her last biscuit and her positivity being chipped just one more bit.

Sandwiches serve a vital clinical need in providing essential carbohydrates to prevent dangerous hypoglycaemia, a regular occurrence in dialysis.

Bread is taken from the mouth of patients on benefits.

I urge the trust to reconsider their decision. Does the cost of sandwiches relative to other expenditure really justify their removal?

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