What’s the point of the NHS if its emergency departments don’t treat all medical emergencies?

   An increasing number of people are having their NHS rose tinted spectacles smashed into painful fragments. Trusting that the doctor and the system he or she works in will be there for you and provide adequate care has become an act of deluded self harm. However even the most hardened and vociferous critics of the NHS like myself tend to expect that one would get some help with a medical emergency in a hospital emergency department. The clue is in the name right? Sadly my recent experience proved to me that the NHS uses language akin to Orwell’s Big Brother, I.e. totally detached from reality.

  I had been suffering from extreme pain in my upper right gum and jaw for weeks, which no dentist could find a reason for and that medication could not alleviate. My already fragile mental health started to crumble under the relentless of that pain and I felt like I was falling into an abyss. My dentist referred me to the hospital on a ‘rapid pathway’ that like all other ‘rapid’ things in the NHS meant a guaranteed lengthy wait. In the end he suggested I go to the emergency department if the pain got unbearable. ‘They’ll have to help you then.’ Apparently they don’t. One morning it did get unbearable and so Mum drove me to Bedford hospital. The first nightmare we encountered was the car park. We were faced with a Mad Max style dystopian vision. An erratically packed wasteland of vehicles filling every legal and illegal spot was constantly, pointlessly circled by cars that periodically got stuck at a blockage in the maze. After what felt like an eternity Mum’s Cheetara (80s cartoon reference!) speed got us a precious illegal space. A hastily scribbled note, ‘Extreme pain and mental health crisis’, left on the dashboard and we were off to get hopelessly lost in the perplexing warren of shabby buildings that is Bedford hospital. It seemed as though the signposts had been written and placed by people who had inhaled too much hand sanitizer. We ended up just wondering into a random building and asking for assistance from the first person who looked vaguely medical. After following instructions that tested our powers of memory recall we arrived at the emergency department which was ‘of course’ probably the most hidden away and inaccessible of the hospital buildings. I realise that TV Hospital dramas are a glossy version of reality but I had expected somewhat more than a tiny dingy reception flanked by two very small waiting rooms. I can only imagine that people bleeding to death or being resuscitated in the back of an ambulance get taken elsewhere. After a few sentences summarising my plight the receptionist told me that they couldn’t help. There were no ‘appropriate doctors’ available on call for my type of extreme pain. All she could offer was to send me to the ‘urgent care’ department for a prescription for codeine, which I could have got via my GP. 

   Although I did get seen fairly ‘urgently’ at the ‘Urgent Care’ unit they didn’t offer me any real medical care. The junior doctor who saw me kept telling me I was ‘doing well’, as you would a five year old colouring nicely inside the lines. As I looked like death, was crying and at times had to get Mum to speak for me, I’m not sure what ‘not doing well’ would look like. He reassured me that if I ‘really couldn’t cope’ with the pain anymore they would have to admit me to hospital. When I tried to get him to clarify what this meant he looked a little nervous and just said my safety was paramount. This is doctor speak for ‘if you try and kill yourself we will treat you’ and is something those of us with mental illness often encounter. It appears to be widespread NHS policy to wait until people attempt suicide before they treat them for their mental or physical pain. Some might argue that this actually encourages the vulnerable to self harm and allows a health problem to grow, which ends up using more NHS resources. But those ‘some’ are clearly not amongst the politicians or medical professionals who are in a position to make changes to ‘our amazing NHS.’

   When I returned home I discovered that codeine didn’t really touch the pain and made me very nauseous, (which is dangerous if you can’t afford to lose weight). In desperation the dentist and I agreed it was worth a shot to remove the tooth most likely to be causing the pain. However it has made the pain worse. Three weeks on from my futile attempt to get emergency care in an NHS emergency department I am now supplied with opiod painkillers that don’t work well and still waiting for my ‘urgent’ referral to materialise into an actual appointment. However after a recent visit to yet another (private) dentist the latest theory is that I either have a serious infection or a fracture in my jaw. As the antibiotics don’t appear to be working that far off ‘urgent’ referral will be redundant because, like countless other suffering people, I will not be able to wait for ‘our amazing NHS’ to treat me in the future mists of time. CT Scans start at around £350 or perhaps I’ll need an even more pricy MRI. Private specialist consultants cost around £200—£250 minimum for a first appointment alone. But the wait will be a few days or a week rather than many months or a year. Moreover there’s a better chance treatment will be competent and even compassionate. It’s amazing how what I call the ‘Trust Pilot tyranny’ incentivises good care in the private sector. So I will just have to raid my savings even more, depleting what sparse financial future security I had, because health emergencies must come first. Although that’s not the case in the NHS, even when you rock up in agony to your local hospital emergency department.