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.

Based on what you said your scan must have shown something serious for you to require a LP. You must have had some bad stats to be sent for a ct scan based on a very bad headache that only lasted a few minutes .

I had a flatmate once who had symptoms similar to what you describe. Afterwards the pain went but she was not herself, seemed quite mentally ill. I took her to the GP who prescribed lithium. She kept saying, I know I seem a bit mad but actually something has happened inside my head.

She DID seem a bit mad, and it was a couple of weeks till she had a brain scan and found out that it had been a brain haemorrhage.

Of course yours could be all sorts of things, but I would definitely want physical incidents ruled out before going the mental health route.

Anything to get a political point in just before an election.

'He's also a T1 diabetic. When they did the pre-op checks, they discovered that his blood sugars are all over the place and decided that he was too high risk to have spinal surgery in the private hospital. They passed him back to the NHS, and he's back at the bottom of the waiting list. He's blown over a grand in fees and is no further forward than he was 6 months ago.'

Private patients get ops in nhs hospitals all the time. If this is indeed what he has been told he needs ro say to his surgeon he'll have the op at an nhs hospital but jump the queue as he's private. Why are his sugars all over the place doesn't he know how to manage his T1 diabetes?

You poor thing. What an awful experience. I had similar last week - not the same symptoms, but I was in agony, sent to A&E by 111. The experience of spending hours in hideous pain, in a chair in a crowded waiting room with no communication, no pain killers that worked, no one visible to approach, etc was traumatic. After I'd been there 9 hours they sent me home with a cobblers diagnosis based on an ultrasound that didn't rule a number of things out. It took me about three days to get over the experience. My GP has been amazing.

What you have described sounds horrific. Have you made a GP appointment/can you get to see one?

Has anybody mentioned cluster headaches? Please look it up and push them for an urgent neurologist referral.

I had this for months when I was 19/20 kept getting told it was sinusitis eventually got referred for an mri scan nothing showed I had no pain relief it lasted almost a year.

Started again when I was 33 same pain and convinced myself it was my sinuses because there was nothing found the time this happened before and couldn't face the judgement. After 4 months I seen a doctor who said she didn't think it was sinuses but try some more antibiotics just incase and come back in 2 weeks. After 4 days I wanted to die I was rock bottom the only way out of this was to end my life I was at rock bottom and called the doctors a locum gp called me back and could hear in my voice and said he very unprofessionally had s tear in his eye and was sorry I hadn't been taken seriously. I was referred urgently to a neuro consultant and within 6 days I was taken seriously I have never met anyone so kind and anybody who knew what I was talking about that was 2 and a half years ago now I'm on daily medication and I have oxygen tanks at home and to take out with me and triptan injection pens on me all the time she is absolutely amazing and has always had my back always outting my gp practice in their place and is the only person that's ever got me. I have steroid injections into my skull a few times a year and I still get attacks but they're called shadow attacks but my quality of life now is completely different.

Please look it up and if you can relate please push.
Also advised not to take pain killers they don't help this type of pain. It's apparently the most painful thing in the world and they're also known as suicide headaches they are that severe.
Hope you get help soon

I've been in constant chronic pain in my lower back for 10 years Op, no GP has ever listened to me and taken me seriously. 3 of them have laughed, all 3 said my obesity was to blame (I was slim before it started). All 3 of them have called me a drug addict despite not prescribing pain relief. My left leg has a constant tremor and I have a constant heat emanating from my back which regularly goes up to 42° but nobody has listened. I know the feeling that you are describing, it is utterly isolating.

@Onethreefiveseven Hope you are okay, that sounds utterly horrendous and I'm so sorry, you didn't get the help you needed, it must have been a horrific experience.

Why would they call you a drug addict yet not prescribe pain killers? I just can't understand a GP would laugh at anyone tbh. Yes, obesity will contribute to back pain so they of course will have had to point that out.
Try a nurse practitioner they may be more help?

A stroke? Are you stoned?

To all those saying it could be a stroke, the OP said when she was triaged they checked it could be that and ruled it out.

Opioid addiction often results in people trying to secure prescriptions for 'pain'. The efforts to combat opioid addiction sometimes make doctors leery of prescribing certain types of pain relief.

So sorry OP. I had an awful time with pain when I had a miscarriage 19 years ago. I was pregnant for the first time so I didn't know what to expect and was given a leaflet saying it would be a bit heavier and a bit more painful than a normal period. What followed was bleeding with massive blood clots the size of ping pong balls and pain that was similar to when I was in Labour with a back to back baby a few years later. I took paracetamol at home which has no affect at all and then in a and e I wasn't allowed anything until 4 hours later because I had already had paracetamol. I then got prescription strength co codamol which made things a tiny bit better but not much. I was terrified that if a 12 week miscarriage was like that then Labour would be 10 times worse but when I had ds1 a year later it was much less painful than the miscarriage and I didn't end up needing any pain relief at all.

Humans are highly dependant social animals.
We do require help from others to survive as species.
Being left in pain without help triggers very primordial part of the brain that tells you that you are basically banished from your tribe and will die of starvation or being eaten alive by wild animals.
You cannot rationally know that but your hormonal response will be allover the place.
That trauma is really hard to get off and I would suggest you speak to someone who got experience with deep ptsd caused by both pain and rejection.
Also, trying to get it from subconscious part may help.

I red abot that while preping for birth and had BP specifying that I want explicit reasurance that staff and partner are trying to help me and showing it in physical and verbal way even if I need epidural and anesthesiologyst is unavailable.
It saved my mind as I ended up walking to ambulance up and down the stairs with all layers of uterus appart from the last one torn.

A stroke? Are you stoned?

The op’s symptoms could be a stroke, yes.
They could also be a brain haemorrhage.
With the symptoms she had she should have been prioritised for a scan to rule those out.

To all those saying it could be a stroke, the OP said when she was triaged they checked it could be that and ruled it out.

The NHS is currently notorious for missing diagnoses, particularly in a very busy A&E.

I know a couple of people who’ve had a brain haemorrhage, luckily they survived. The first symptom for both was severe neck pain followed by crushing skull pain.

OP I know you’ve left the thread but I hope you’re ok and getting checked out.

I had similiar awful pain about 35yrs ago, different times, different NHS. GP came out, had me admitted straight to hospital on the suspicion of meningitis. I quickly saw a consultant, was given good painkillers and a lumbar puncture. Turned out I had a bad case of viral meningitis. Needed 6wks off to recover.

In contrast, my son was left sat in A&E for 4hrs crying and vomiting with a raging fever on the verge of passing out, he had a sick bowl thrust at him and a nurse said he would be put on a drip (which never came). Turns out he had sepsis 🙄 The lack of compassion is awful. Don't give me the whole too stressed to cope argument, nurses were laughing and joking amongst themselves, but didn't have a word of kindness for a struggling young lad. Fortunately he remembers virtually none of it, I'm still traumatised.

I'm quite sure she isn't. Are you devoid of any empathy and common sense?

It's a shame the OP has felt the need to leave the thread that she started in need of support, because of dross like you making comments like this.

My son nearly died of this in February 🙈

While I have many gripes with some NHS staff (those who've come close to killing me in the past three years), it's nothing compared to the intransigence and incompetence of NHS management, senior civil servants and ministers.
If you want to keep capable people working in a high-stress environment with antisocial shifts, it would seem foolish to make them pay for a degree which gives them transferable skills, suited to better paid, 9-5 jobs.

I was laughed at during every appointment and was told that any further attempts at discussing pain relief would result in "drug seeking behaviour" being recorded on my medical records. Kindly read my comment again as I clearly stated that before the pain began, I was slim. Therefore when I first experienced pain and saw my GP I was slim. I was laughed at. I agree that obesity can be a mitigating factor in back pain but I didn't think random back pain spontaneously occurring in slim people would be caused by non existent obesity. I find it very telling that my failed epidural was not mentioned by any of the medical professionals that I saw.

I have had something similar, a rare kind of bowel obstruction and sepsis, they thought I had a psychotic break and the shaking / sepsis was anxiety.

I survived after being sent home from A&E but might not have

It's very hard to trust them now.

“Lastly, we bloody pay for a national health service and should be able to use it when we are in excruciating pain like the OP was, without being guilted for it.”

This is the problem right here. You think you’re entitled to free health care. Not everyone pays into the NHS.

I paid over 20k in tax last year, I'm happy for some of that to cover people who can't pay into the system to get the health care they need. I also expect that to cover my own medical needs.

It's not sodding free. And I'm happy to pay for it but I expect to be able to use it.

The issue is the NHS isn’t sustainable. You even have issues of medical tourists coming into the UK with zero intention of paying medical bills.

When you get sick you have this expectation the NHS will care for you and you are shocked and appalled when it doesn’t.

I posted years ago about having my baby in a private hospital and I was ripped to shreds on mumsnet. Meanwhile I was reading posts about new mothers in crowded NHS labor wards who were complaining about the person in bed immediately next to them and their loud husband’s/boyfriend’s staying overnight and snoring and not being given adequate nutrition or pain relief.

I had access to a nursery, my own private room with a queen bed, a beautiful view and I could order what I wanted for every meal.

The government and my insurance paid for this.

I did this because the public hospitals aren’t safe in my city and I didn’t want to be under the care of a midwife.

For the interests of not seeming like a biased left-winger, I'm going to use Daily Mail stats for the sake of argument here.

According to this article, we lost £180million to health tourism over 5 years. This covers elements such as tourists needing A&E treatment.

Let's ignore for a minute that tourism brings in £127billion per year, which is roughly 9% of our GDP.

The NHS budget is £168 BILLION per year. So health tourism is costing the NHS 0.1% of its budget. This is also ignoring all the money we save from people (like yourself) already opting out of NHS treatments.

Now, let's see how much the government recently wasted on improper PPE storage...£1.4 BILLION.

So yeah...I'm not going to get angry at some migrant getting treatment from the NHS. I'm choosing to direct it towards a government that mishandles our money.

I'd also like to add that poor healthcare is costing the UK an estimated £43 BILLION per year in lost productivity and output. It's short-term thinking to assume that we're making a saving in not giving someone treatment for a 'minor' ailment, when that can result in their condition worsening or at best, just a few days off work.

PS my Polish husband would much rather use the Polish health service than the UK one, because he gets better standards of care there. A large quantity of EU citizens feel similarly...despite them having to pay a health surcharge to gain visas here, they'd rather not use our resources.

So yes you might facetiously tell me "When you get sick you have this expectation the NHS will care for you and you are shocked and appalled when it doesn’t." but I'm well justified in expecting that the NHS will fucking care for me when I'm sick - even if we remove emotion from the argument, the economics behind it make total sense (even if we remove the fact that I'm a net contributor from the equation).