"Excellent 111 service"

We called 111 out of desperation. We had taken our teenage daughter, who has an underlying condition of Phelan McDermid syndrome, to A&E twice in the previous three days to be sent home both times almost immediately. We knew she wasn’t very well, with spiking temperatures, vomiting and general lethargy. She had been in hospital on two separate occasions for sepsis in the past year. Our daughter is non-verbal and cannot always feel pain. We didn’t know what to do and thought we shouldn’t go to A&E again, as we could be deemed to be wasting their time.

The 111 service was amazing. The call handler listened and heard our concerns. A doctor phoned within ten minutes and converted the call to a video call. Straight away he said he did not like how she presented. He booked us into A&E. Without this, we would have stayed at home and she would have continued deteriorating.

We ended up staying in hospital for nine weeks due to a diagnosis of HLH, four days of which were spent in PCCU. We will always be grateful to the wonderful staff at QMC, once we were finally admitted, but without the 111 staff we spoke to that morning of May 11, our outcome could have been drastically different.

They will probably say they were doing their jobs, but to us it was more than that. They took us seriously  and listened to us, because our daughter cannot not speak for herself. I can’t put into words how grateful we are and will always be.