"Really Hurtful and Upsetting"

I attended because I had harmed myself. I want to preface this by saying that the nurse practitioner and support staff that helped me were absolutely lovely. They couldn’t have been kinder. The nurse practitioner felt that the wounds were serious enough that they needed stitching and sought advice from a doctor. The doctor also agreed that this was the case. But then in a discussion outside the door of the room I was in the nurse practitioner was told that they couldn’t be stitched because ‘people like me’ rip them out and make the wounds worse.

This is an horrific generalisation. I was completely transparent with them as a staff as to the reasons I’d done what I’d done and that nothing like this has happened for almost two years. Had I known that I would be treated like ‘one of those people’ I would never have shared what I did. I made myself vulnerable by being completely honest and felt completely insulted by the decision made by the doctor.

If this is in fact policy then I suggest it gets reviewed. In the past when this was a regular problem for me my wounds were always stitched without incident, this is the first hospital to ever say this to me. To be responded to like this was completely insulting and made an already distressing situation so much worse.

I will now be left with increased scarring and where steri strips have been used to pull the wounds closed they have already begun to blister my skin because they are too tight.