"Really negative experience"

My daughter had severe onset of abdominal pain where appendix is and was vomiting and could not walk. Ambulance took hours to come, advised to drive her in myself, waited at A&E for several hours before seen, doctor then was sure it was appendicitis.

She was sent to ward 7, where she was waiting for an ultrasound, which did not happen. She was sent to gynaecologist for scan, came back nothing wrong, then eventually sent for ultrasound, nothing showed up.

Surgeon tried to discharge her with morphine and anti-sickness but we said she was too poorly to go home and nobody available to bring her back in if symptoms worsened. She was awaiting a CT scan that never happened, and was admitted to ward as in pain, vomiting, and awaiting CT scan.

Each surgeon changed their mind as to whether she was getting CT scan. She was then discharged with pain meds and told CT scan ambulatory appt would be 24/48 hours. However this was delayed, and when she did not get one, it showed it was her appendix. So she is now back in for bloods and examination and awaiting surgeon to come round.

Overall experience was awful, my daughter had to keep asking for pain medication which sometimes took 30 minutes to get, nurses said her bloods had been erratic but now stable, upon discharge we queried this with doctor who said this was not the case, her bloods were fine.

The lack of communication, inconsistent, inaccurate and wrong information, long wait times for scans, waiting for pain medication and anti-sickness on the ward causing distress and increase in pain unnecessarily, having to ask several times. We feel she was forgotten about, not taken seriously and not prioritised, she felt uncared for like she didn’t matter. Only to have to come back. If she had been given the CT scan when she was meant to she would be at home recovering by now. Surgeons kept changing their mind, feel unable to trust due to inconsistencies.

Overall a really negative experience that could have been avoided if the original care plan had been implemented and followed through. Waiting in excess of 3 hours for an ambulance even though her condition was deteriorating. We were told backlog and anything between 1-4 hours. A really traumatising experience.