"Appendicitis"

Walked myself into A&E of New Cross in the early evening with a lot of pain in my abdomen. Had to wait about 1.5 hrs to see the triage nurse, who suspected appendicitis and gave me some pain killers. Going through the process of verifying this took quite long, but I cannot really be unhappy with this, tests take time. After being admitted I had to wait for a bed until about 2 a.m. I was placed in the surgical assessment unit (ward A9). Unfortunately, the nurse was not allowed to give me any pain killers because a doctor had not approved this yet. So I went the whole night until the morning without any pain relief, barely slept. It's the worst pain I've ever experienced. I don't even remember if I ended up getting pain relief in the morning, all I know is that by the afternoon, at about 3 p.m. I was finally wheeled into surgery. The last few hours before surgery were the worst in terms of pain, so I am not completely sure of the time since I wasn't paying attention. The surgeon said afterwards that the situation was worse than they thought. It turns out my appendix had perforated.

Every single person on staff, from the people who clean to the nurses and doctors, were all incredibly nice to me and hard working. Especially the nurses, I can't imagine working those long night shifts but they did it and with a smile.

(I do wish I could have received some pain killers during that first night, though.)

When the surgeon came by in the morning a couple days later, I was told I could go home. I waited a few hours for my discharge letter/release papers, and eventually asked the nurse who asked me if the surgeon had told me I could go (? isn't this communicated?). So I went back to waiting and some time later the nurse came to tell me I could go and that my discharge papers would be sent by post. Unfortunately I have never received them. I have emailed the hospital via the email listed here on the website but also never received a response. This is unfortunate because I do need them to prove to my university that I missed uni for a legitimate reason.