Hello,
My son has been struggling with pain in his lower right side on and off for the past year, he has been to see multiple GP's at our own surgery and also 111 and on three occasions he has been sent to A&E by the GP's to rule out an appendicitis.
Every time we have ended up in A&E we have been sent home after being told it is his lymph nodes because his throat has looked red. This pain that he is having is becoming more and more frequent, he is missing a lot of school because of it. He has recently had blood tests at our GP surgery which haven't showed anything, and our hospital has rejected a referral for an ultrasound scan.
Yesterday he was off school again because he had been up in the night in pain and feeling sick. We booked a GP appointment but all they had was one for Monday, so because he had complained that it was feeling worse last night we took him to 111 and my son explained that it hurts when he passes urine, the pain is made worse when exercising, and when he takes a deep breath in. He has also told us that it hurts more after dr's have pressed on it. Yet again we were sent to A&E to be told that they couldn't do anything in the night so we decided to bring him home and this morning we took him to the next hospital along from us, because our hospital is under so much pressure and have triggered OPEL 4 and I personally feel that because he's not serverly unwell with it they just don't have the means to do anything about it. The Dr he saw today has sent a letter to our GP to instruct them to refer him to the children's ward to have full clinical tests and scans to find out what is going on, but I don't think I want him to go back to my local hospital.
So I wanted to know has anyone gone down the right to choose route for a child? My gut feeling is telling me to take him to either Alder Hey or Manchester children's hospital because I just want to be taken seriously, and if we don't get this sorted it could impact him next year when he goes in to year 10.