"Positives and Negatives"

My daughter was admitted to hospital with abdominal pains. Upon arrival at the ward we were asked questions about her condition and when I explained that she had suffered with diarrhoea, we were told that the hospital that she had been transferred from did not let them know this otherwise they would have given her a room on her own. About 2 hours later she was transferred to a room on her own which I have to say was lovely.

A lovely student nurse then explained that they needed to do another blood test because they did not have the results from the hospital that my daughter had been transferred from.

My daughter was then put on a saline drip and given IV antibiotics to treat her condition. We were told that she would need a scan to see if it was her appendix and she would need to remain nil by mouth . The doctor that recommended this then went off shift and no scan took place.

THe next day a surgeon very briefly popped their head into our room to say that she would have the scan today at some point but she would need to remain nil by mouth. At this point my little girl had not eaten anything for three days and was very upset, in pain and very hungry. About an hour later a very abrupt nurse popped their head in and said, "Oh by the way your scan is booked in for 10:15 and you will need to drink lots of water" They then left and waited to be taken down to radiology but no porter appeared and at about 10:10 the abrupt nurse appeared and said, "She will need to drink more than that." I then said, "OK, will we need to walk down ourselves?" The nurses smiled and said, " Oh yes". I then helped my little girl to get downstairs and had to wait in the radiology waiting room for 45 minutes with a little girl in lots pain.

After her scan we returned to the ward and waited till about 6pm to be seen by the doctors with my little girls results. At this point the doctors were still unsure what to do because the scan did not really show my daughters appendix. After discussing my daughters blood results they decided to put her on the waiting list for surgery. The surgical team and porter were fantastic and really looked after my little girl and I cannot fault anything about their care.

We spent a further three nights in hospital during which time my daughter remained on an IV line. The play workers in the hospital were truly amazing and nothing was too much. The student nurses, cleaning staff, kitchen staff and health care assistants were outstanding and really cheered my little girl up.

With the exception of 2 or 3, the band 5 nurses would enter our room and would not even acknowledge myself or daughter. A simple, " Hi love, how are you?" would have been nice but this just seemed too much for some of the staff.

I was also very disappointed with the weekend doctors because they just seemed to rush everything including the decision to discharge my daughter.