Shell shocked after a and e visit

[Onethreefiveseven]

I am looking for advice on what to do next as I feel like I'm not coping

I started developing very severe neck pain yesterday. I am not inexperienced with pain, I've been through significant, life-threatening medical events. This was far worse pain than breaking a bone, for example, or an infected surgical wound. I've also had migraines and this was much worse. The closest comparison was when I went into hyperstimulation during a pregnancy induction and felt like my abdomen was in a vice. This time I felt like my skull was about to crack. It was so extremely painful and very frightening, I also had blurred vision on my left side. The pain was so intense I can't describe it.

I was sent to a and e by 111, got there at 8, told 3-4 hours wait. I sat in waiting room on a hard chair groaning and crying. By the time I was triaged the wait had become 5-6 hours and then by 11pm 8-9 hours. I spoke to a receptionist who made it clear that I wouldn't be seeing anyone until the morning. No pain relief until then. So I asked my partner to pick me up and we called 111 again desperately trying to get pain meds. Spent the night waiting for callbacks and begging for help down the phone. Sobbing and at times screaming from the pain. I finally got some codeine this morning, after 14 hours of indescribable pain.

This morning the pain is more under control and I thought I would feel relieved but instead I feel odd, psychologically, in a bad way. Kind of dead eyed and like I want to cry but can't. Hopeless. The fact that I interacted with so many people and no one helped. No one even really seemed to believe me how bad the pain was. I'm not writing this to blame them. Maybe they were doing what was necessary, prioritising other patients. It was still horrific though.

I will make a drs appointment for my physical health but I want to know what to do, today, to try to minimise the psychological effects. I've barely slept and I can't figure out what to do. Has anyone else been through a prolonged period of very intense pain and/or been denied pain relief, and found a way to cope with the emotional aftermath. Maybe just writing this down will help, I don't know.

Same here. She had the headache and collapsed. Decrebrate posturing and taken to hospital. Came to with the headache and neck ache. They ignored everything I said about how she was found. Diagnosed as having had a heart attack. Given blood thinners. Seven days later they eventually agreed to a CT. Missed the bleed. Four weeks later still on blood thinners and had a second bleed. She died. When I got to speak to the trust in a meeting they admitted their failures, and agreed that they would look at specialist training. They argued with me that blood pressure rises in SAH.....nope, it drops to your boots with any major bleed. Hopeless. Fortunately it's a rare enough condition, but no excuse.

You should be ashamed of addressing someone in pain that way! It's appalling.

Similar experience with childbirth that left me with PTSD, not a long labour , in fact a pretty quick one for a first birth, but denied pain relief, mocked when I was crying with pain, told I had at least 12 hours to go when I was in fact fully dilated and that I was "silly and stupid and fussing about nothing" "weak and unable to cope with a bit of pain". I had EMDR many years later which really helped. This is only a brief summary of the abuse and cruelty I experienced, it left me utterly phobic about hospitals which was a problem as I I have had quite a few medical incidents since then though luckily have never encountered such a nasty callous bitch like that midwife ever again.

I hope you get answers OP and feel better soon

@Onethreefiveseven I know OP said she is leaving the thread so tagging her in….

Google the Cost of private health care in the UK . We don't have medical insurance so we rely on the NHS . It's pot luck care depending on staff shortages or the volume of patients and how ill they are when they arrive at A and E .

This. I had a 24 hour wait in A & E recently with my DH.

You have to learn the system and exaggerate everything.

I am suing the NHS for another matter. It literally barely functions.

The NHS was like this last time Conservatives were in government, just before Blair was voted in. The Conservatives want the NHS to fail.

I hope you receive more compassion in life than you’re giving and that it might help you to understand the pain of others.

We don’t have private emergency services. Private health care here tends to be for a specialist appointment or a private GP appointment. If you’re having a heart attack or have broken a bone then you’re in a long line with everyone else.

The last six sets of accounts show that the Department of Health and Social Care have underspent budgets by £27,000,000,000 in that time. The issue isn't money.

I'm so sorry you had this experience. Have you thought about complaining to PALS?
I'd definitely think about complaining though. If only for the aspect of feedback. I'm not saying it will resolve anything, but at least you'd feel better for having said something.
I'm very surprised they prescribed you codeine, it's well known to make headaches ten times worse. I know, I've been there!
Hope you feel ok soon 🌻

I took codeine in early labour and it didn't make any difference whatsoever to the pain – and the consultant later actually laughed when I said in shock that codeine made no difference, and he said "yes of course codeine won't touch the sides, labour pain is too extreme for that". So I'm surprised they didn't offer you more extreme pain relief – morphine etc – if it was that painful. I've heard of people being kept in hospital for intravenous pain relief for migraines – so you could have had a v v severe migraine, or a stroke...

The only similar experience I had was during my labour. I eventually had an epidural (it was always my plan to have one, and was requesting one for HOURS) and the next day I felt as you described – shell shocked mentally that no one had "let" me have pain relief for so long. But it did pass after a few days, so wait to see how you feel once the dust is settled. You might get PTSD, but you might just need a few days or weeks to mentally recover

Just a quick note that if you've not got something specifically A&E do google walk in centres nearby - sometimes it's a little further out but honestly I can only say I was seen within 3 hours when I went to ours and got a correct diagnosis, which sadly wasn't the case after waiting over a day at A&E. I feel they offer better care than A&E because they are less used and maybe we need to be pointing people to them rather than A&E first (looks pointedly at 111). I am lucky to be in a city but we no longer have an A&E, so I had to drive myself half an hour to ours (pay for parking and come back alone still in pain the next day too). But for many people in that A&E a half hour drive to the walk in would have meant they could go home within hours.

A huge issue is the lack of staff and that is partly due to the fact that they have been leaving in droves. If the issue is not money why aren't NHS staff paid more so that more remain? Why haven't the government agreed to pay rises?

That must have been awful, so sorry. Really wish something could or would be done about the unacceptable state of the whole health system, especially A&E.

It wasn't as bad as it is now. It did get much much better under labour though. It seems weird to think that there was a time when there were practically no waiting lists. The problem is that people didn't notice that much and it has been easy for the Tories and their supporters to claim that it was no better under Labour.

This. It’s very expensive. We are sometimes really pushed to use it, but most people can’t afford the expensive insurance or appointments without insurance all the time.

I think there were only ever almost no waiting lists due to manipulating the figures, it was under Blair that they started cancelling appointments at the last minute and giving a new date weeks later. The waiting time was then counted from when the new appointment was given instead of when the original appointment was given. It was also when it became impossible to get a GP appointment in the next few days, you either had to get an appointment on the day if you could get through before everyone else and were deemed urgent enough by the receptionist, or wait weeks. It’s still the same now, but that’s when it started. I don’t think it’s improved in any way, under any government, for the last two and a half decades. At least not in my area.

I DO have private healthcare.

There simply isn’t any private provision for major trauma or serious life threatening conditions.

There is a private urgent care near us that deals with minor injuries and more run of the mill issues but anything serious and you’ll be bounded back to the NHS.

When the PM was hospitalised with covid it was an NHS hospital he was admitted to - simply because there is nowhere else.

Its the NHS or die. Or rather the NHS and hope you don’t.

We have none anywhere near us unfortunately. It’s a highly populated area, so you would expect some, but there don’t seem to be any. I don’t think they are that common countrywide.

I’m so sorry for your experience.

I’m an ICU nurse, the system is broken. My colleague was in as a patient and had to share a chair in the waiting room with another patient. Patients wait on trolleys and nurses can have 15-30 + patients each. A&E and assessment units are absolutely drowning. They will be prioritising cardiac arrests and similar but your symptoms are definitely concerning, they just literally can’t get through people quick enough and there’s not enough doctors, nurses, AHPs to go round.

Primary care is also drowning to the point of not coping so it’s a horrible cycle.

Could your GP refer you to an assessment unit? I know I just said they are drowning but where I am that is what would happen, and it does slightly speed things up as you aren’t waiting to be seen in A&E first. Or is there a different hospital you could try?

You need to see a doctor, definitely as an emergency appointment or A&E. To summarise you are having extreme debilitating pain in the neck which was sudden in onset, changes to your vision, a feeling of intense pressure in the skull and potential neurological changes (ie If you are feeling disorientated or confused or similar please state this), and a feeling of doom?. I hate this about the system but in order to get seen more quickly you really need to be clear in how you describe your symptoms and be really careful to not play them down, a feeling of doom can often indicate something too. Please be aware that as someone with a high pain tolerance you could be describing pain of an 8/10 that someone else would call a 15/10.

Pain can reduce in an emergency, it can wax and wane, can be the effect of analgesia. As an ICU nurse if you were my patient we would be at a CT scanner within an hour max of these symptoms and you’d have been seen by at least an ICU senior doctor by now.

I hope you feel better soon and it is nothing serious. I am not an expert at all on your symptoms but if you were my patient would be very concerned.

You just can't do that when you are in terrible pain. When I went in I was in so much pain I was screaming for help at one point and thought I was dying. I was just told to wait. Bloody awful, when I was a registered nurse pain relief was a priority not an option.
You can't have a waiting room full of people crying and screaming which is what I saw when I was there. We supposedly live in a civilised country not a bloody third world war zone.

A and E are seeing more people than ever. The problem is A and E gets people turning up because of failures elsewhere in the system. Good social care means less elderly people fall and end up in A and E. Access to GPs mean people see their GP instead of going to A and E unnecessarily. Good mental health services stops so many people turning up at A and E in crisis.
There used to be under Blair in my City a falls prevention team and a team to work with people who kept getting admitted to A and E. This is because both types of people were making up a disproportionate amount of A and E visits. It was about prevention. Help people manage their conditions better and try and stop people falling in the first place. It was all scrapped when the Conservatives came in.
We have people at home being "looked after" by very elderly relatives who fall as a result, all because they can not get carers.

Not to frighten you, but I just want to add that my grandmother also had this awful neck pain that the GP she managed to see the same day said was muscular.

A few days later she passed away from a subarachnoid haemorrhage.

Please make sure you get checked over again.