"Sad state of affairs when this is how you are..."

What I liked

None of my experience was good

What could be improved

I arrived at Ward 17 (Same Day Admissions Unit) at 07:15 in the morning for admission to Hospital for what I expected to be morning surgery.

I was told by the Nurse that admitted me that ENT runs an all day operating list and I was patient 8 out of 9 on the list and therefore not to expect my operation before 3pm. I read on the pre-admission leaflets that you can eat up to 6 hours before your operation but the Nurse would not let me and another lady have any breakfast.

I saw the Consultant who did not give me the opportunity to ask any of the questions that I wanted to ask him about the procedure that I was to undergo that day. He spent the two minutes that he was by my bedside talking to his Registrar about how an operation that I had had previously was performed rather than talking to me.

I saw the anaesthetist who was a lovely lady and I asked her that because I was so far down the list could I have some water. She said that you can drink water up to two hours before the operation and once the order of the operations had been confirmed with the Consultant, she would advise the Nurses who on the ward could have water and that they would then bring us some water.

I began the long wait and watched as the other ladies bar two were taken away for their operations. Eventually me and a lady opposite me were left and no Nurses came to see how we were or offer any water as promised by the anaethetist at approx 8:30am.

By about 2pm I started to feel really hot, sick, dizzy and weak.

I with the other lady asked for some water, we were told to expect our operations within the next two hours so we could not have any water. I then started to be sick with bile, my blood pressure was taken and at 4pm I was taken to the ambulatory care unit to have a drip as I was so dehydrated and wait for the operation from there, I had the drip in but was still being sick from starvation and dehydration. I was told at 6pm after 11 hours waiting that my operation had been cancelled

Anything else?

After 11 hours waiting for my operation and 12 hours without any water and 24 hours without any food all the Consultant could say to me was "so you are the one that got chucked out, sorry about that". I was extremely ill at this point from not eating and drinking for so many hours and I feel extremely traumatised from the whole ordeal.

I went home for two days and cried and wondered why this happened to me?