"I felt dismissed"

I appreciate your response to my story. I also appreciate the difficulties Emergency departments are facing on a daily occurrence. In response to the suggestion about making a formal complaint - I didn’t want to go down that route for the exact reasons you stated with A&E depts being under so much pressure.

I have nothing but the utmost respect for each and every person who works within any hospital. As far as the waiting time, I mentioned that because the amount of time I waited only to be ushered out the door after a consultation no longer than 5-7 minutes long. Also like I mentioned I battled with the pain at home for around 4 hours with my own pain medication. To then go to an emergency department and ask 3 different staff members for pain relief, and not 1 of them got me anything whilst being in agony, I found very shocking.

It was only the sister that seen me after shift change and how bad the pain was I was suffering from, that Sister in charge didn’t hesitate and got me pain medication within 5 minutes to try and help me until I seen the Doctor.

And again like I said, the doctor gave me no additional pain medication, no scans, no tests even though I was in severe horrific pain with very visible distension of my abdomen where I was getting the pain.

Just over a month since I last posted on my situation at the Ulster Hospital. And it’s appropriate I write this now as I’ve been in a lot of pain throughout the day ( At this point people probably are saying, “Then go to A+E”).

After my last visit to A+E in reference to this post you can see my experience was horrendous. Horrendous to the point I don’t want to put myself through that again with 3 different Nurses refusing to give me anything for pain and a Senior Doctor giving me all of 5-7 minutes of his time before being ushered out the door. I know I know, people say, if you’re bad enough you’d go to the A+E department. When you suffer from anxiety/ panic attacks and you’re suffering from horrific pain on top of that along with very visible distension of the stomach, it’s not that easy of a decision. Especially after the last time I was at the Ulster Hospital.

I had a similar experience years ago when I was younger. Telling me I had trapped wind, that it’s constipation, it’s an ulcer etc etc … I went back and forth for 2 years until a Consultant finally took the time to talk to me, examine me, run a few tests. Turned out after this Doctors compassion and understanding and patience that I had a twisted bowel (Volvulos).

I in no way want to go through that again and would like my current situation sorted before it gets even worse to the point were my bowel has fully twisted again.

What do I do? Continue to be house bound and deal with the pain at home with an average of being in pain between 8-10 hours a day (can be an hour here, then for 2 hours or sometimes it can be just 30-45 minutes). Or go to a Hospital where I was treated very poorly and sent home the same way I arrived - in horrible pain.