To be angry that the NHS doesn’t take pain seriously?

Currently in an and e being refused medication and doctors won’t see me . I was born with my ichronic illness and pain.

Neighbour was head of radiology at the hospital now retired. Scans are rationed here she said. These days. One of them takes crochet in to pass the time. They're frustrated by this.

And yet there’s a mobile scanner in the hospital car park where my oh has his regular infusions for his cancer. I sit and wait in the car park sometimes. He can be there for 2-3 hours. During that time, maybe 1 or 2 people go into the mobile scanner, in for maybe 15-30 minutes, then it’s about an hour before the next person goes in. It’s certainly not busy. If they’re only doing 2 or 3 scans in a half day session, it’s no surprise there are long waiting lists. The cost must be astronomical to hire the machine and pay for the staff to do so few scans.

I was kicked by my horse in Feb 2017, went to A&E, X-ray confirmed the break. Temporary back slab then an appointment for a cast.

When the cast was removed I instantly complained it was painful, but was dismissed, they also didn’t insist on physio etc as I still had the horse and that was sufficient exercise.

I was taking aspirin constantly for pain every day, asked a G.P and was told it takes time to heal, I was wearing two elastic bandages as it still felt as if the bones were moving and the break was bent like a boomerang.

Eventually I went back to my Drs in August 2018, I’d had enough. I explained driving our manual car was nearly impossible (left arm was broken). The Dr suggested I put my foot down and insist to my husband that I have our automatic car. This was the more economic car as he worked long distance, I just bimble around shopping etc. He finally gave me a number to book an X-ray, low and behold it was still bloody broken. The Dr rang me the next day and apologised, he said I must have been in a lot of pain, yeah, no shit Sherlock. I now have a metal plate, it’s still a little bent and painful if I knock it.

Now if I see this Dr he takes me seriously and still mentions my arm and how sorry he is. I explained to him that people with horses tend not to be on the mardy side, you just get on with it, oh and I’m a woman, we soldier on, it’s what we’re good at!

@MMUmum You can but co codamol over the counter.

And men also benefit from the women's fight - my dh has just had his breast cancer screening letter after turning 50 - as men get breast cancer also

This is because PSA tests are notoriously unreliable, throwing up false positives that lead to unnecessary investigations, while missing those at serious risk. PSA tests are thus only routinely given to those considered to be at greater risk due to a family history of prostate cancer, their ethnicity or because they are experiencing suspicious symptoms.

Ensure you get a dexa scan wrist features are osteoporosis fractures

If you have something that can not be cured, many of us so, especially as we get older, then pain treatment can only go so far. Higher level pain relief often causes issues if used long term. And many people do not use lower level pain relief effectively. They take paracetamol for a day and declare it does not work, when it has a cumulative affect.

I have a chronic back problem (spinal cycts) that causes awful pain and have been dismissed for 12 years. I've had scans etc and mris, at one point I'd been having injections that the hospital then told me should never have happened at the GPS as they need to be done under CT guidance.

I've honestly given up trying to get help now and just live with the daily pain.

Regular testing is unlikely to become a thing unless it becomes more accurate though.

Actually Ddad was part of a trial of it - his “numbers” (I forget the detail) were only very slightly elevated so, normally he wouldn’t have been referred. But because it was a trial, they did refer him. And it was cancer.

So a normal or close to normal reading doesn’t always indicate that the person doesn’t have cancer.

Unfortunately the test also goes the other way and has a high false positive rate which is a huge amount of stress and pressure on resources to find out it isn’t cancer.

I expect it’s not cost effective to offer it as well as it being unreliable.

I personally also wouldn’t use America as a bench mark - it’s not unheard of for unnecessary tests to be offered there.

Unfortunately it IS about the NHS as access to specialist and scan etc are gatekept leaving people suffering and in pain.

@Neurodiversitydoctor I am 32, and all other hormone tests, ovarian and uterus scans have come back normal with healthy egg reserves and regular ovulation.

I do not know that the coil has caused infertility. I am saying if my next test shows I have scarring of my fallopian tubes, it is most likely to be due to the coil (having never had an STI).

Maybe, if you had the copper coul for 7 years unless you were a teenager when it was fitted, then TBH any fertility problems are far more likely to be caused by age than the coil. If you are still under 30 then I apologise for making assumptions.

Another one who agrees OP. I had constant period pain needing strong painkillers and bleeding more weeks than not (usually 3 weeks a month) for a year. I spoke to multiple doctors, who did scans and said nothing was wrong. Each one asked questions about contraception, and I told them I had a copper coil.

Only when I spoke to a practice nurse, and mentioned I had a copper coil (which I’d been told had a lifespan of 10 years) did I learn that they often start to degenerate and cause problems from around 7 years, which was the number of years I’d had my coil. She said herself “it’s life affecting but not life limiting, so this issue often isn’t taken seriously”. Thank god I came across her.

I had it removed, and those symptoms immediately stopped.

Now my husband and I are trying for a child, without success. I am arranging a private referral to check whether that time with the coil has caused scarring. I hope not, but if it has, I’ll have the NHS’s inaction to thank for potential infertility.

@joyousgreyorca backs are tricky things: a private MRI identified that I had one crushed vertebra and bulging disks at L4 L5. That was in 2016.

In 2024 I had a full body scan with a dye and by then the T1 had also been well wedged. Additionally it identified I have degeneration at the hips, knees, ankles and right shoulder and confirmed that I have Paget's Disease.

That all sounds horrific doesn't it. Sometimes my back is a bit stiff but I have No pain. People have far fewer problems and are in agony.

I'm 64 and still working full-time and need right now to get in the car and on my way.

There are few explanations about why some people suffer badly and others don't.

Back at Xmas 2022 my dad was in extreme pain in his back and hips, to the point he couldn’t move. He’d been to the doctor about back pain which they’d dismissed as he’d had a slipped disk in the past and assumed it was related. Just painkillers and exercise. When he told the ambulance pain was in his hips too a scan was arranged. They discovered lesions on his bones which were called by multiple myeloma. He started cancer treatment by Feb of 2022. If he’d not had the scan they’d never had found it.

He did well on treatment and is in remission but it never completely goes so it will be back some time 🙁

It's one of the reasons I joined Benenden, £15.99 a month & after 6 months you can have private treatment, scans, consultations, if the NHS will take longer than 3 weeks & a long list of common operations.

I have both those conditions and whilst what you say is true to an extent 95% of the people with natural west and tear don't have the nerve pain or limb weakness that people like me and the OP experience. In order to live full and productive lives people need accurate diagnosis and imaging to get proper help.

This explains it :
https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/pressures/nhs-diagnostics-data-analysis#:~:text=The%20UK%20has%20less%20diagnostic%20equipment%20than%20other%20countries&text=The%20UK%20has%20just%2010,while%20the%20UK%20has%208.6.

The UK has fewer MRI scanners per head of population than most of the rest of the developed world. MRI scans are rationed in a way they really shouldn't be.IMO the answer is more scanners would save money in the future.

Who ever said HIV was " all in the head"?

Thanks. After seeing the cock ups it’s no surprise our cancer outcomes are lagging behind other developed countries. And the waste - oh has a cupboard full of expensive drugs where he’s been issued too many due to them cocking up his regular monthly prescription - some costing £1k per tablet per the nhs website. Also hyper expensive bags of chemo infusions that they chuck in the bin because they’d been left out too long whilst waiting for a nurse to set up the cannula.

When I first went to my GP with my back pain I was given amitriptyline, gabapentin, pregabalin and Tramadol over the first 12 -14 months, none of them helped, plus the side effects were horrendous and many.

I went back to my GP and asked for a referral for an MRI, she replied that I had tried everything, over a correct period of time and that she would refer me. Within 6 weeks I'd had the MRI and the follow up appointment with the consultant to discuss my results and treatment options. That was in 2013, the NHS, at that time, was not in bits.

If the GP refuses the request ask for a second opinion but the Practice will probably close ranks. My Practice has some sort of weird cabinet arrangement, head honcho and everyone else around a table, discussing various individual cases.

My point is that your mother should go back to her GP and ask for an MRI, she's done the time span and tried all drugs, none helped, she's still in chronic pain, time for an MRI. Dread to think how long the waiting list, they are though, relatively cheap privately, if one has the money.

YANBU: I got sent to the surgical admissions unit by the GP with suspected gallstones. I was in agony. My pain threshold is quite high due to a connective tissue disorder. Once he ruled out gall stones the Dr was SO dismissive. I could hear him in a discussion (behind a totally discreet curtain) with another doctor who was working with him. She kept suggesting giving me the option of an admission for a morphine drip he kept saying I was clearly anxious and overexaggerating because of it.

He even asked me if I could be perceiving my pain to be more severe than it is because I was anxious about not knowing what it was.

It was actually a medical student on her first placement who was my saviour. She was really uncomfortable with the fact the lead doctor kept trying to discharge me because I was visibly in pain and she'd noticed a few red flags in my records confirming high pain tolerance. E.g I tore a ligament in my ankle and didn't notice until my foot swelled because I'm so used to ankle pain. She went over his head to the registrar, and advocated amazingly got me. The registrar offered to admit me instantly for pain meds, and then referred me for multiple ultrasounds, x-rays an MRI and an endoscopy. I actually declined the admission because I just wanted out by that point.

Turns out my "anxiety" is actually a rare stomach deformity that can cause the exact symptoms I experienced 🫠.

I don't blame anyone for not figuring out the stomach deformity. It's rare enough that there's basically no information on how to manage symptoms other than cutting off the deformity in a gastric bypass.

However, I do think the lead doctor should have been less dismissive and should have listened to me, as well as his colleagues about not brushing off my pain as anxiety.