"Dreadful experience"

Honestly, absolutely awful experience! Rang 111 and was told they needed to send an ambulance, ambulance staff arrived and couldn't have been better - temperature was 39.4, high heat rate, having fever dreams and sickness and diarrhoea for 24 hours, terrible kidney pain! They really helped, then said I would have to go to the hospital!

Arrived at the hospital, the nurses at the handover were nice, then taken to the ED where things rapidly went downhill.

Seen by one Dr who told me the opposite of the paramedics, and it was nothing to do with heatstroke and just a bug and I needed fluid.

Set up in a bed and not even given a pillow to rest my head as staff poorly attempted to inset cannulas, my veins were bad as I was clearly badly dehydrated but it was painful to say the least when both cannulas tissued, leaving IV fluids and potassium puffing up my arm!

I had the absolute pleasure of meeting a doctor who was the only saving grace for this hospital, they took their time and carefully inserted two cannulas and was really nice, softly spoken and just in general exactly the sort of person you want as a doctor around you!

So, with that I was set up with 2 drips in a poorly positioned bed with no pillow and left alone. Now, as I stated I had bad diarrhoea and vomiting and no one had shown me where the call button was, not that I could have reached it if they did, so the inevitable happened and I was unable to get anyone's attention in time to ask them to stop the drip and I defecated myself and was left trying to get someone's attention to help, not very dignified at all!

I was then given the call button, thankfully! My obs were still reading low blood pressure and my ECG was reading poorly (this was never described in great detail so I don't understand what was wrong and I was told to tell my GP but again wasn't told what to tell them). I have been diagnosed with a small hole in the heart, so any issues obviously cause panic, but no reassurance was given at all!

I was then transferred to a different doctor for whatever reason, who didn't tell me their name and was rude and arrogant, they came in and despite 5 minutes earlier being told my blood pressure was too low and they wanted more blood tests and wanted me on more fluids, they decided that no more treatment was necessary and I should go home and let my body naturally purge everything, despite the fact that that led me to this position in the first place. They told me - I'm not going to kick you out right now, you can wait until the morning! Like they were doing me a favour by allowing me to wait around aimlessly getting no help.

I'd asked for paracetamol and got none, despite the pain cause by the poorly inserted cannulas and my kidneys and the chills and fever returning. With that I was done with being made to feel like I was wasting their time in trying to seek help. I managed to arrange a taxi and travel the 25 minutes to where we were staying in disposable pants, again left with no dignity, by the time I was home I was doubled over in pain again, high temperature, fever and had kept none of the fluids in my system!

In my experience, the staff just generally really lacked the professionalism you'd expect to see, especially in a teaching hospital. Oher patients' details were discussed loudly, and that was another problem I feel they need to address, because that's a huge failure on their part and reflects the attitude they had to patients, myself included. Like I said, there was one or two who were nice, but honestly I wouldn't wish that treatment on anyone.