A GRANDFATHER is “like someone with senile dementia” after hospital blunders left a blood clot on his brain untreated for more than two weeks.

Margaret Blackman, 68, says she has to watch her husband, Robert, round-the-clock at their home in Kirkcaldy, Fife, because of brain damage suffered in hiospital.

This week, Scotland’s public services watchdog said Mr Blackman’s condition was the result of a “serious and significant failing” by medics at the town’s Victoria Hospital to order a CT scan in time.

Mrs Blackman, a former hospital cleaner, said: “I’m going into bad health myself now because he can’t be left. He burns things, he puts the kettle on with no water in it, he puts the washing machine on and rips all the rubber because the clothes are hanging out. I’m constantly at the back of him trying to fix everything every minute.

“You’ve got to explain everything over and over to him. He’s always breaking things, he can’t coordinate things, if he opens a cupboard door it’s left open. He thinks he’s alright but he’s not.

“I’m going off my head looking after him to tell the truth. It’s like looking after someone with senile dementia.”

Mr Blackman, 64, has been unable to return to work as a welder supervisor and is no longer allowed to drive. His ordeal began in August 2015 while the couple were on holiday in Benidorm, Spain and he fell out of bed, striking his head on furniture and the floor. He lost consciousness for

10 minutes but when he came round insisted he felt fine.

Mrs Blackman said: “After a few minutes he came to and said he was alright. But when we went down for the meal at night he was putting everything and anything on the plate and thought ‘there’s something wrong with him’. But after that day he seemed alright – the holiday finished and he drove all the way home from Edinburgh.”

A few days later, however, Mr Blackman visited A&E at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy complaining of a sudden “bursting” pain in his head. He told doctors that he had had a persistent headache and was on the blood thinning drug, clopidogrel. Patients on this medication are at increased rise of bleeding inside the head following a head injury.

However, the doctors diagnosed a minor head injury and discharged him without carrying out a CT scan.

Mrs Blackman became alarmed when her husband appeared to deteriorate and took him back to A&E 11 days later, where she said she “had to beg” doctors to request a CT scan.

She said: “He was getting a sore head all the time. He had his head in his hands with the pain, he was in his bed all the time and he’d stopped eating and I said ‘no, we need to go back to the hospital – there’s something wrong’.”

The scan revealed a blood clot which had been growing and putting pressure on Mr Blackford’s brain. He was immediately transferred to Edinburgh for emergency brain surgery but subsequently suffered a stroke and spent four weeks in a coma. He developed seizures, which the report by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) said were “likely” caused by delays in removing the the blood clot.

The brain injury has left him with short-term memory problems, difficulties retaining information and and a change in personality.

Mrs Blackman said: “He’s as aggressive as anything. You can’t take him into a shop because he starts a carry on and he’ll be arguing with everybody.

“You can’t tell him anything - it all has to be his way.”

The SPSO report said Mr Blackman would have made a “significantly better recovery” if the haemorrhage had been diagnosed and treated when he first visited A&E.

NHS Fife director of nursing, Helen Wright, said the health board accepted the findings and apologised. She added: “We always work towards providing patients with the best possible care, however, we accept that in this case we fell some way short of providing this. Since this event we have put in place measures to prevent such an incident from being repeated in future.”