Welcome to the Spring edition of the HSA newsletter, Connections.

Our meetings this month were all virtual due to another peak in covid cases. Please accept our apologies for not releasing this edition until after all the meetings had occurred. We hope many of you follow us on social media and were informed of dates and able to attend.

Unfortunately over the last few months my family has suffered from illness, which has reduced what I have been able to do for the HSA, although I have an important message about advocacy from my experience.

On 15 June I started having difficulty breathing. When this worsened, I attended a GP respiratory clinic on the 19 June where I was diagnosed with post covid wheeze and recommended some cough medicine. My condition continued to worsen and I attended a hospital emergency department the next day. I spent the majority of the day at the hospital I was moved to short stay, diagnosed with asthma and sent home with Ventolin and told to take 12 puffs every hour as required. That night I struggled to breathe and I re-attended emergency the next morning; this time I was taken seriously and on triage by a doctor. He was very concerned that he could not hear breath sounds in my lungs. After that discovery, things moved much quicker and I was diagnosed with bacterial tracheitis and was close to respiratory arrest. I was treated in intensive care for 3 days and on a ward for another 3 days.

During this time my wife raised a complaint. This is still under investigation and is classed as a critical incident. The point here is that this investigation would not have happened if a complaint was not raised, as the doctors involved on my first trip to emergency did not report the incident even though both my wife and I spoke to them in the emergency department when I re-attended and after I was correctly diagnosed.

The lesson from this experience is to be vocal and advocate, and use the hospital escalation process. This is different in different states/territories and some states/territories have laws around this process.

Moving on to Association news, as outlined in the last newsletter, the committee was able to get together and spent a day working on a new strategy for the next 3 years. We developed a mission statement that we believe represents the current direction and focus of the HSA and will guide us towards great achievement. Our new mission is “The HSA mission is to empower the Australian hydrocephalus community, enabling inclusion, informed experiences and improved health pathways through connection, advocacy, education and promoting research."

We also completed a plan on a page with focus on these areas: Connection, Advocacy, Education and Promoting Research. There will be future sessions to do some further planning and the plan on a page is available from the committee if you would like a copy. It will be available at our meetings also.

I hope everyone has done ok through this latest covid wave and that anyone who is unwell gets better soon.

Andrew Garde
President, HSA