My wife and I were in this A&E 3 days later. She’d new lower body numbness appear some months into a broken back recovery. 101 said go straight there, this is a no fuck around situation.
We get there and are advised it’s a 12 hour wait, the place is rammed, ambulances are queuing and the corridors are full of gurneys and paramedics.
My wife at this point is in tears. The broken back means sitting for an hour on a shit waiting room chair is hard work. 12 literally can’t happen.
So we leave. What else can we do.
The situation was fucking awful, but I don’t blame the staff. I felt genuinely bad for all of them - there was just a complete lack of hope on any of their faces.
Long story short the MRI showed no impinging of the cord so we were told to just monitor it. It’s slowly fading.
The long story is that the next day the GP repeated 111’s advice so we bundled up pillows and painkillers and, still very upset, we went back. After an hour the triage nurse told us that all the GP needed to do was a referral by email and we would have been admitted straight to the spinal unit.
She then rang the GP and actually tore them a new one. It was highly satisfying.
We spent the rest of the day in spinal, her on a bed, and got seen by excellent staff who did more explaining about the injury and what to expect than anyone else had done to that point. We were in limbo about the whole thing till then.
Fuck.
My wife and I were in this A&E 3 days later. She’d new lower body numbness appear some months into a broken back recovery. 101 said go straight there, this is a no fuck around situation.
We get there and are advised it’s a 12 hour wait, the place is rammed, ambulances are queuing and the corridors are full of gurneys and paramedics.
My wife at this point is in tears. The broken back means sitting for an hour on a shit waiting room chair is hard work. 12 literally can’t happen.
So we leave. What else can we do.
The situation was fucking awful, but I don’t blame the staff. I felt genuinely bad for all of them - there was just a complete lack of hope on any of their faces.
That’s awful.
How’s she now? What was the cause of the numbness?
Long story short the MRI showed no impinging of the cord so we were told to just monitor it. It’s slowly fading.
The long story is that the next day the GP repeated 111’s advice so we bundled up pillows and painkillers and, still very upset, we went back. After an hour the triage nurse told us that all the GP needed to do was a referral by email and we would have been admitted straight to the spinal unit.
She then rang the GP and actually tore them a new one. It was highly satisfying.
We spent the rest of the day in spinal, her on a bed, and got seen by excellent staff who did more explaining about the injury and what to expect than anyone else had done to that point. We were in limbo about the whole thing till then.