"A fracture to my thumb"

I hurt my thumb, had a phone consultation with my GP, had an X-ray very promptly then a call from my GP saying I’d fractured a bone in the base of my thumb and he was referring me to the Truro fracture clinic. I waited, no contact from the clinic, called the fracture clinic and they said they had returned my referral as they didn’t do hands, I needed the Hand Clinic. So the referral was sent to the Hand Clinic but was sent on the ‘wrong system/file’ so nothing progressed. My GP said in 20 years of making referrals to Truro fracture clinic he’d never been told they ‘didn’t do hands’ or that the Hand Clinic [HC] needed special forms/systems. I called the HC and was told they needed a correct referral, told my GP and in early April the correct referral was sent in the correct format to the HC.

I regularly call the HC, no-one calls me, I have no idea if someone has looked at my X-ray and decided I can wait or if my paperwork is simply lost. Every call to the HC gets the same response, I seem to be on a waiting list where I might get a call on the 21st April, nothing seems very certain. I’m really hoping someone has looked at my X-ray and decided ‘oh that is fine it can wait’ even if they’ve not bothered to share that decision with me because I delayed contacting the NHS initially so as not to be a nuisance during these Covid times so my injury is probably 6 weeks old now and presumably healing or doing its own thing. Who knows if it is knitting together nicely or horribly. My pain has reduced [I’m wearing a thumb splint bought from Amazon] No-one has told me how serious the injury was, I’ve no idea if I should be worrying about Osteoporosis or bone density given I’m 64 and seemed to do the injury washing my hands vigorously which seemed crazy at the time and made me mentally downgrade the injury because who breaks a bone handwashing?

I’m really very disappointed in the treatment I’ve [not] received since my file arrived at Truro. There are obviously huge communication problems between GP and Truro the Truro and the patient.