"Left and right hand problem!"

My Mum was taken to A+E last night by ambulance with chronic back and chest pain again, she first drove herself in earlier in the week and was seen in A+E and told she needed a ct scan as they felt after examination that she may have a kidney stone, then after being shunted through more reels of identical questions was left sitting in the waiting room to then be told she now no longer needed one and that she should return home with painkillers, the cop out drops. She did then still in pain return home. Last night after another run of examinations she was asked why she was given no antibiotics for her urine infection and did the last doctor not find the fluid on her lung? The acute breathlessness and severe pain being a fairly large clue to the cause of her problems. She was then seen by someone from respiratory who said she would need an urgent scan and some of the fluid from her lung drained for testing. A+E stepped up and said they would be happy to do this but where then told they could not it would have to be someone from respiratory, the person from that department then told my mum that if she returned home they would call later that morning for her to come in for the fluid to be drained, so she went home by taxi a 4 in the morning, still in pain and still breathless and still with no medication. I sat with my mum this morning waiting for this phone call that never came, after 1300 I started trying to ring relevant departments and in the end left a message with respiratory. The secretary duly rang and knew nothing about my mum and as it appears neither did A+E, and we where then told that it was not possible for her to have the procedure she was told she was having unless she was referred by her own doctor? Now is it me, are we living in a parallel universe, how many times do we need to go round and round in circles before someone finaly decides that the lady is sick, frightened and needs help. She is no wimp my mum and if she called an ambulance you can be sure that pain is acute. She is now sitting in the waiting room of her gp waiting to see an emergency doctor for a rapid referral letter. Now you tell me is that how it all works now just talk the talk, fob them off and you may treat them after they have jumped through your ever increasing hoops. As a daughter and mother it just terrifies me that anyone should fall ill any more, what do you do, risk A+E the Bermuda triangle of British medicine. Regards totally speechless.