Blood oxygen levels of 90 - is the NHS being crap here?

In what way are you masking, you're sleeping all day and turned up to hospital, so what is being masked exactly?

OP@Predictablenamechange1 has anything else changed or got worse recently? Any issues with swelling in your abdomen or in your legs? Do you already take any meds for any associated conditions eg.diuretics, BP tablets? Sometimes when you get abdo swelling it can impact on your breathing pattern and make it harder to take a deep breath. I think it can be hard when you are stage 4 for people to see past the “stage 4 diagnosis”…if you are still working and normally active and independent they may not appreciate this is not the norm for you.

I’d absolutely seek a second opinion and have done before. Especially if you’re not feeling great and that’s not your usual sat levels.

When my son was critically ill they had him on fast flow oxygen in the icu as he wasent msintaing his oxygen sats, they were talking about putting him on a ventilator as his sats kept dropping below 90 so im not sure your advice is correct .

the context is everything here though and no one on MN has any of the information needed to say whether it seems a sensible decision or not. The cirrhosis may well be a bit of a confounder and means that the sats need more than mumsnet level interpretation. If you have a contact in your liver team then it may be worth getting in touch with them as another option.

You know, I’m on this thread to try to help the OP a little. Your comment wasn’t particularly helpful; in fact it came across as quite accusatory. If you want to fight with someone you’ll need to look elsewhere because I don’t wanna play.

I had similar and that was at a hospital in Canada in which I was paying for treatment. I had glandular fever and an oxygen level of 82%. They still discharged me as I was young with no underlying conditions and otherwise expected to recover.

I was replying to your comment which stipulated that I don't know anything about autism. Please do let me know how my experience of autism means I do not know "anything" about autism. I guess what you meant to say is that I don't understand anything about the OP's autism which would be correct but then neither do you because it is impossible to fully understand another person's experience even if you have the capacity to consider that their experience may be different from your own.

@Predictablenamechange1 if you don't feel "right" go back.
It's a long time to wait until Monday morning and be able to contact your GP.
Be completely honest to the drs about how you feel.
Take someone with you if you have someone who can.

You know what they say: if you’ve met one person with autism… you’ve met one person with autism.

I agree. My dad was sent home from a&e one morning after being diagnosed with a chest infection. Despite not being able to walk, my mum took him home, as was doing what she was told. I lived an hour at the time. That evening, when my dh got in from work, I drove up to see how he was (we had young dc). Luckily, being a qualified nurse, I was able to see he was very ill, did he observations etc and rang an ambulance. They took him in but were told by a&e not to go as we could probably take him home. Umm, no, it's not happening. The next day went in. He was still ill. It was only me questioning them further. They did more tests and found it was not a chest infection at all, but encephalitis. He is lucky to be alive.

If you feel you are not being listened to can you take someone with you to advocate on your behalf? There will be discharge notes, probably via nhs app.

I am autistic and while I appreciate everyone is different, my autism never stopped me from seeing that in order to get the outcome I am hoping for, I need to give accurate information.

OP, do you have someone who could go back with you to advocate for you while you’re there? It’s hard to really say much else because no single test should be used in isolation. It’s about building up a clinical picture using all the information available. Sats of 90% are not within normal range unless you have COPD though, so I would be wanting to know the reason for that has been properly investigated and a treatment plan put in place. If you haven’t had that and you feel like something isn’t right then you need to go back or go to a different hospital. And take someone who can advocate for you.

If you're still unwell and don't feel need further review after A&E discharged you I'd persist with trying to get a GP appointment.

Ultimately if you attend A&E with a presentation that they feel should have been sorted by your GP they may (especially when busy) not fully examine you/essentially exclude immediately life threatening cause of your symptoms and then discharge you for GP to undertake the next tests.

If your saturations are normally >96%/no respiratory problems normally then if they've discharged you with saturations persistently averaging around 90% then I would find that unusual as you're indicated for supplementary oxygen at that level. However if you're a heavy smoker for example further testing may have satisfied them that the low sats are now normal for you due to the lung damaged caused and that you can be left with sats of 90% being normal for you. But this should have been well explained if this was the case (i.e. tell you you've been diagnosed with COPD/emphysema).

Liver cirrhosis is not cancer.

Erm do you know anything about autism? Apparently not.

It's strange you have liver cancer and they haven't looked into this further.

Well, if you are masking then how do you expect them to know that you are not feeling well? Reminds me of my friend who was complaining about her GP never testing her for sleep apnea even though she wakes up gasping for breath. I asked her if she mentioned it to her GP and she said she didn't...

Please don’t be embarrassed OP. Ill health is ill health, there’s no blame to be placed. As I said it sounds rubbish. I’m not surprised you’re struggling with all of this. It can be hard enough to advocate for oneself at the best of times, and when you’re ill it’s certainly not the best of times!

Sorry your not well OP, we have a small oxygen sats monitor at home ,cost about £15 and Dh who is not well uses it a lot.

It helps us to decide what to do medically wise.

hope you get some answers and feel better soon.

I feel for you. It’s horrible feeing ill and exhausted and knowing something is wrong but having now answers. If you can pay private do. If you can’t tbh you need to go to a different a&e and ACT the way you’re feeling. It really is the only option - I have had on many occasion had two very different responses from drs when masking compared to acting the way I feel. The problem remained the same but one got me being told I require treatment, the other had me shooed out the door.