There’s no doubt in my mind that the NHS does outstanding work, so I don’t wish to bash the service completely in this post. What follows is what I have experienced over the course of this last week which has left me worried and frustrated.
On Tuesday evening I was supposed to have an NHS dentist appointment for a filling or three. The dentist had squeezed my appointment in between two others as he said it wouldn’t take long and needed doing as soon as possible. So I get out of work early for this and start heading there, only to get a call from Kat saying they want to cancel and rearrange my appointment because they were running really late. So I’d essentially given up 2 hours of overtime and the (very needed) money that goes with it for no reason at all.
I go home to see Kat sprawled out on the sofa, clutching her stomach. She says it’s been hurting since she woke up at 9am and has gotten worse. She’s started on dinner so I pick up where she left off and let her rest. By 7ish the pain is even worse so we called NHS Direct. The nurse called back after 20 minutes and said it’s probably just a tummy bug and to take some paracetamol, eat something bland and drink lots of water.
This didn’t work at all, and I suggested trying to sleep it off. That didn’t work either and Kat soon started throwing up. Strangely she didn’t throw up dinner, save for one classic piece of carrot, which served as further notice that something wasn’t right. By 2.30am the pain had become unbearable for her so we called NHS Direct again, to be told there was a 4-5 hour wait for a nurse to call back. It was then I decided to get dressed and take her to hospital.
We arrived at Southampton General Hospital’s A&E department at about 3.15am. We had no idea what was wrong, and for the next 24 hours neither did they. It was like being in an episode of House as one doc after another failed to agree on a diagnosis.
At 3.30 we were in A&E being looked at by a nurse. Kat had to get into one of those very sexy robes that show off your bum and blood was taken for testing. They gave her anti-sickness pills and liquid paracetamol. Not that either worked. The doctor had an idea that it may be Gastritis but wanted to rule out anything more serious with the blood tests.
There were constant screams from the adjoining cubicle as a man, who was being held to the trolley permanently by two hospital security staff, kept yelling that the machine next to him was going to blow up. He had lost the use of his legs, probably due to the 5 grams of Cocaine he said he’d had! They soon moved Kat away to another cubicle and left this guy away from anyone else as he was being violent.
They then tried Kat on some other, stronger, painkillers while they waited for the blood tests to come back. They didn’t work either. So they tried stronger ones still, which she threw up. By now it was 7am and the blood tests, which they sent off at about 4am, still hadn’t come back. The pain kept coming back and getting worse so they finally gave her a shot of morphine. That did the trick. Kat’s eyes glazed over instantaneously and the nurse laughed at her as she stared into the distance. She turned to me and said “I can see how people get addicted to this stuff!”
Just after the morphine they took her off for x-rays of her stomach and chest, as her chest was beginning to get tight as well. Then they told her they were moving her up to E5. Which is all well and good, but it would have been nice to have been told what E5 was and why she was going there.
We got up to E5, which turned out to be Emergency Surgical Admissions, just before 8am. They put her in an assessment room and a third year medical student came to take a full history. I’m not sure he was a third year Uni student, he looked like a third year secondary school student! He told us that the doctors start their rounds at 8am and so should be with her shortly. Shortly turned out to be 1.30pm.
In that time Kat remained in the assessment room and failed to get any further pain relief, despite asking for it several times. When the doctor came round the nurse also came and gave her some more morphine, this time orally, which apparently doesn’t work as quickly or as well.
The doctor, a junior doctor, had no clue what was wrong. She said the x-rays showed a little excess gas but nothing more and that the blood tests came back normal. So then we had to wait for a senior doctor for review. I’m not sure what time the senior doctor came round, I was down grabbing some food, but it was some time mid afternoon. The senior doctor was also unsure as to the cause, but the appendix was mentioned as a possibility. The senior doctor said that the consultant would be round and he would make a final judgement on the problem.
A little later someone actually asked Kat if there was a chance she could be pregnant. It turns out they never tested for this before now. We’d been in the hospital for 14 hours, a girl with serious abdominal pain but no other symptoms and they took that long to think about possibly being pregnant? Turns out she isn’t. But still, probably should have checked earlier.
The consultant came about 6.30pm. He said that blood tests showed no sign of infection and that he had no proper proof of what the problem could be. He said that from looking at her you could see something was wrong and she was obviously very tender. But the tests showed no sign of anything. He said he felt in his waters that it was appendicitis, so booked her in for surgery to have a camera through her belly button to take a look. He said the other possibility was a ruptured cyst on her ovary.
After this it was just a wait for her surgery time. The pain returned and pain relief was scant. Kat’s mum was there and she had to keep making a case to the nurses to get her some painkillers. The care at this point left a lot to be desired and Kat was in serious pain for several hours. She was finally taken into surgery at 4.30am on Wednesday morning, 25 hours after we arrived in A&E.
I returned home, got to bed about 5am. Not that I could sleep. I dozed on and off for most of the morning, worried about Kat and waiting for some news. News came about 8am that Kat was back on the ward. She text me about 9am to say her appendix had ruptured and she’d be in longer than expected. She was on a new ward, where the staff were much more attentive and she was much happier. Still in a lot of pain, with a fever and very groggy but now officially on the mend.
She was later moved to another ward, where the staff were less helpful. The girl in the bed opposite Kat was given the wrong medication and the wrong dose of another medication, despite the girl telling the nurse it was wrong. Now that’s quite a scary thought. Fortunately the situation was sorted and the girl was ok.
Thankfully Kat was allowed to come home on Saturday afternoon and is now recovering while we stay at my parents house. I think the whole ordeal has left Kat put off the NHS for life.