"Lack of care from GP"

Being assessed by a Community Consultant Psychiatrist, prescribed pills on a trial basis last September.  All good.  Had to have ECG and Blood pressure before taking, all good.  Trial lasts 3 months, Psychiatrist said they'd see me in three months.  Three months came and went.  After four months I rang the health team and asked if I'd missed a letter - I was told they were busy and the appointment would come through.  Because it's a trial drug, I had to get the GP to do a non-repeat prescription every 4 weeks.  Considering it's a neurodivergent stress related anxiety inducing condition, where I have difficulty sometimes functioning, and organising myself, this was no mean feat. 

After 6 months, and the GP holding my prescription a week I went to collect my drugs from the chemist expecting to find the drug - and there was simply a note saying the GP was refusing to issue the prescription because it was only supposed to be three months and it's now gone on 6 months.  

I had to then organise myself by phoning the surgery who told me they wouldn't issue the drugs - tough if you've run out. I then had to ring the Psychiatrist's secretary who apologised, and said the Psychiatrist was off at least another 4 months, and that they'd help but needed an ECG and Blood pressure.  I tried to then arrange for this via my GP surgery.  No appointments so no drugs for another 3 weeks.  I was told to go buy my own blood pressure monitor.  So I did my own blood pressure monitoring, and my watch does an ECG - so I sent those into the psychiatry department who then had to wait for a different consultant to review the test results for them to then write to the GP to issue the drugs. 

I was given a temporary script for 7 days' worth of drugs - like for the three weeks I had to wait - so three times phone calls/visits to the chemist - huge impact on me.   It was horrific.  The amount of stress it caused me, and running around not to mention stress, worry, cost.  It takes me a day to ring someone up sometimes such is the effort.  I care for two disabled teenagers, so the amount of pressure and time I am under.  I am down as a Carer in my GP - they rang recently - what difference does it actually make? Did I feel supported and looked after by my GP or their staff? No!  Did I feel valued or even a tiny bit of help was given to me? No.  It feels like there's an undercurrent coming from the NHS that anyone with a psychological issue is an inconvenience to the GP surgery and they start to play hard ball and there was no intention to make my existence, or attempt to get the drugs easy for me. 

Two years ago, I was told I couldn't get my HRT unless I got a blood pressure check.  I let it slide. My life is so busy, and my psychological condition means I don't care for myself very well.  I went without my HRT for two months.  In that time, I reached burnout pretty quickly. I felt exhausted and started getting a line of spots across my forehead.  After that, I attended the GP, who was quick to diagnose Ramsay Hunt Syndrome.  As a result of that, I lost my job - I had a total of 4 days sick pay in my contract, and I needed more time off sick to recover.  So my temp contract job - because I couldn't cope with the amount of work I had on, caring for my two disabled children, and recovering from this.

As a result of not getting easy access to blood pressure checks, I went into thousands of pounds of debt whilst I tried to recover from Ramsey Hunt Syndrome. I'm still paying the debt off today after getting another job.  So it may seem trivial to you guys, but there is a big impact in the way you are and accessing these simple checks.  The barrier to access health care, to get through to the GP, the tone and way the call handlers speak to you and seem quite aggressive in manner and tone, questioning your need when you are already feeling overwhelmed led to me not accessing health care and caused my life to tumble into awful spiralling effect.