"A Traumatic Experience!!"

Brilliant staff (except one Doctor), working in very stressful conditions not helped by the amount of people in the waiting room that appeared to be there for very minor ailments!

Extremely long waiting times, even for triage, on the first evening.

Despite the person I was with practically laying on the floor in agony he still had to wait 30 mins to be Triaged and that was after telling the receptionist 3 times he couldn't wait. It was a helpful Security Officer helped him into a wheelchair so he could get into triage when he was finally called.

After having morphine and a drip we were left for 3 hours til the doctor had time to see us.

He had by then lost the notes! Asked us what had happened and told us to go home and call an ambulance if it got worse again, to take buscopan and pracetamol.

On asking, we were told the bloods were clear. Also he told us he didn't know how long the morphine took to stop working.

We repeated the perfomance the following night but were unable to get an ambulance because of a 4 hour wait so I took him back again.

After another long wait in severe pain we saw a different Doctor.

We discovered the bloods weren't clear the day before and the Doctor referred us to the surgeon straight away.

The offending appendix was removed within 4 hours.

It is frightening to think that the NHS can no longer gaurantee to get an ambulance to you in an emergency. Worse still, that when you do get to hospital that you can be in excrutiating pain and have to wait for other people with sore fingers or 'flu' to be seen first.

From what I have seen this week it is no exaggeration to say that the NHS is in crisis.

Most Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics are exceptional at there jobs but how long can they be expected to carry on in these conditions.