A DESPERATE wife gave her husband a forbidden drug to ease his pain after a wait for an ambulance dragged on for more than four hours.

In sheer despair Ann Sawyer finally cancelled the ambulance and gave her 60-year-old husband, John, who had been suffering a night of agony, a drug that his Parkinson's disease specialist said he should not have.

"It was a total nightmare," Mrs Sawyer said at their home in Oak Lane, Figheldean. "John had been in excruciating pain all day and the doctor came that evening and called for an ambulance.

"I was told it could take an hour or even an hour-and-a-half and that the hospital was expecting him."

But when Mrs Sawyer rang nearly two hours later, she was told the ambulance had been busy answering other calls.

By 1.30am the next morning, the ambulance was still not on its way.

"So I cancelled it," she said. "I gave John Diazepam and he managed to get some sleep."

The couple's nightmare is compounded by a drug-dose pump that John needs and which Mrs Sawyer claims staff at Salisbury District Hospital are often unable to operate.

"I would have had to drive behind the ambulance to Salisbury at three or four in the morning," said Mrs Sawyer.

The night of misery is one nightmare episode in the long and lonely struggle that dominates Mr Sawyer's life.

A former plumber, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's 20 years ago, though he had probably had the disease for several years before that, Mrs Sawyer said.

"We feel so alone," she said. "Nobody knows what it's like for the sufferer. John has told me he would rather be dead.

"I've looked at him sometimes and thought the only thing I could do for him is to put a pillow over his head and end it. People just don't understand.

"People have said to me 'I don't know how you cope, Ann' but that's just it," she said. "I don't cope. I can't cope. It's an absolute nightmare."