I’ve spent the day since talking to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) at lunchtime shaking uncontrollably, swearing and raging, laying on the settee in silent tears and, for the last two hours, drinking beer and now wine. ‘Luckily’ we are on annual leave so I can do all these things.

I think it’s fair to say that since Connor died we have been treated in a remarkably consistent and appalling way. We’ve had no equivalent of a police liaison officer to help us pick our way through the wreckage of his death and our shattered lives. We’ve had no support, kindness or understanding from any of the organisations implicated in his death (the Trust, the county council, the clinical commissioning group, NHS England or NHS Improvement).

Instead we’ve been smeared, pissed and shat on in extraordinary ways.

In addition, we’ve been expected to attend numerous meetings with the ‘great’, good and mediocre to try to improve practice. All at our own expense, all in our own time and not one single meeting held in Oxford where we live. We have been chewed over, sucked dry and spat out.

I think we’ve behaved pretty well in the circumstances. I’ve only started using the word cunt regularly in the last few months or so. It trips off my tongue now. Rich has stormed out of the odd meeting or raged down the phone to the odd Chief Inspector or two, but in the circumstances small fry really.

We’re a family, like so many others, who have experienced the worst possible happening; the preventable and brutal death of a beyond beloved son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin and friend within the hallowed walls of the NHS. A young man with his whole life ahead of him, discounted as human because he was labelled as learning disabled.

We’ve sucked up delay after delay, obstruction, deceit, denial and mother-blame on a scale that is more than enough to generate long term mental ill health. We’ve battled on with remarkable support from many people. Dealing with the death of a child is horrific. Dealing with the accompanying shite and recriminations that come with the bullying, defensive and self obsessed practices of public sector organisations (and individuals therein) which have failed, is simply brutal.

Today I was told, after an opening filler of no substance whatsoever, that the NMC had ‘accidentally’ shared our personal details with the six nurses under investigation back in November 2016.

There was no whiff of an apology until I asked for it.

A couple of hours later, when I was able to speak, I found out that this data breach involves:

Our home address, my mobile number, email and bank details, my mum’s name and phone number, Connor’s date of birth, NHS number and his dad’s name and phone number.

The redaction policy of redacting personal information had been ignored when it came to our personal information. There were other redactions. From this, we can only infer that we, like Connor, were discounted as human. How else can you redact some personal information and not others?

This apparently came to light on June 26 2017. Over two weeks ago. Five out of the six nursing staff (or their counsel) were contacted by email on Monday with a request to destroy or return the disc containing this information. Four out of the five have apparently acknowledged receipt of the email with no accompanying action. The sixth staff member who only has a postal address hasn’t been contacted yet. The NMC haven’t bothered sending a letter.

Our personal information is still out there live and kicking.

The senior member of the fitness to practice team I spoke to after the first call spouted root cause analysis and learning shite after a delay of an hour between calls while she bothered to get the relevant information to hand to answer my questions.

I can’t articulate this violation other than in tears. A flood. The level of contempt and disrespect is generating weeping in a way I thought we’d kind of crawled beyond. A return to the Sooty tears. Almost worse in some ways because it is so fucking wanton.

The basics here – like don’t leave a patient with epilepsy to bath alone in a locked room and redact the personal details of the dead patient and their family when sharing information –  don’t need investigation or root cause analysis.

And the tears kick in again.