My Terrible Experience at A&E

The past couple of days haven’t gone to plan. Valentines Day and Samuel was in A&E then yesterday it ended up being me.

I’ve had a very sharp stabbing pain in my back which has been making it challenging to take a deep breath and I woke up yesterday morning hardly able to breathe due to a weight on my chest.

I tried to just take some pain relief and continue on because the reality of having a condition like M.E. Is that we have been gaslit so many times that we’d rather just deal with innate suffering at home, as much as is humanely possible anyway.

My parents both told me that I needed to ring the doctors. “You know that could be a PE, Jessica. You’ve had one before. You need to get their opinion.”

Having another PE hadn’t honestly crossed my mind, otherwise I would’ve rang. I remember the rush into hospital last time and being told the terrifying news on my own in the middle of the night…

Better just give them a call.

I rang them and within moments of the call, they’d sent me to hospital to get checked out and rule out a suspected PE.

Felicity had to go to my mother and father-in-law’s after she came home from nursery. We’d tried to advertise it to her as having a special sleepover, but she cried as she left the door (mainly and very randomly because her buggy was being collapsed and she didn’t want it to), but it still left me feeling awful.

I’ve always had someone with me in A&E as my carer because I have a tendency to faint when I’m sat up for too long, seizure to which I’ve got rescue meds I can’t administer myself and I can’t get to the bathroom on my own. Even in the height of the pandemic, I had someone with me and I know a) how lucky i am for that to have happened and b) that it’s not been the normal in these strange times.

But this is the reason why I think all disabled people should be allowed someone…

On this occasion, they categorically wouldn’t let Samuel in. I was in severe pain when i was breathing and my chair was too upright to be sat in it for hours on end. I panicked slightly and made sure I had everything on my lap in the waiting room.
“You don’t fit the exceptions, he’ll have to wait outside.”

The thing that I don’t understand about this rule is that it makes their job harder. Anytime I needed anything, I was going to be faced with going to reception, with reception calling a nurse who’d then have to stop triaging to come and get me to the bathroom or to pour me a drink. It would’ve been so much easier to have just let him in to do it for them.

I was called in for triage and I tried to explain the situation to her. She was lovely but not understanding so I then went back to waiting on my own.

Then i started to feel a bit faint. The room was going in and out of my vision so I leant my head to the side; I’d been sitting up too long. When I become overly exhausted, i start to feel like I’m being dragged under the surface. A fire could start and I’m not sure that my brain would compute enough to get me out quickly. It’s just like the computer shuts down and I crash.

When my name was called for an ECG and bloods, I followed the male nurse who didn’t wait for me as he went around corridors and I had to work out where he was going.

As soon as I entered, I told them I was feeling faint and not well. Lately, I’ve been fainting when my bloods are taken or when I have to move too quickly, so I wanted them to know.

He and the other nurse nodded and told me with zero compassion that they’d do this first and I’d be seen afterwards. They obviously weren’t clicking that someone who feels faint is quite probably going to faint when they try to do bloods.

ECG done. Bloods? Well, we know what my veins are like. They tightened the tourniquet around my arm but my veins wouldn’t come to the surface. The male nurse took over from the female nurse and started pulling it even tighter and hitting my arm.
“Please keep your arm straight.”
I can’t keep my arm straight due to an operation i had to straighten them after contraction; my left arm physically doesn’t fully straighten. I tried to explain this whilst I felt myself going in and out of consciousness. He didn’t listen.

After multiple attempts and wiggling the needle in my vein, he moved to the next arm. I could feel myself going and tried to tell him, but i was ignored. I needed to lie down, desperately.

He went in for another attempt and I fainted. I tried so hard to hold on but I couldn’t. The nurse didn’t even notice me slumping in my chair or the sweat that was appearing on my forehead. All he commented at was the fact my arm had moved.

I fell into a state of semi consciousness, like I was in a room where everything was echoing around me but I couldn’t communicate back. The nurse just told me to wake up, as if it was that easy.
“Jessica, wake up. You need to go to the waiting room.”

Wait, where was I? I was too tired, too bone cripplingly exhausted to think. He shook me and as I tried to fight to get to the surface, I mumbled that I felt really ill and faint.
“You need to go to the waiting room.”

I came to with blood on one arm that he hadn’t even cleared up. My coat was hanging off me and I felt physically sick with exhaustion.
“please, I feel ill.” I begged, but I wasn’t laid down, I wasn’t helped, i was just told to go back to the waiting room.

Somewhat disorientated, I went into the corridor but i couldn’t remember where I was going. My head was swimming, the lights and noise pulsing around my head. I’d been left. I stopped my chair in one part but it was the wrong place and I didn’t know where to go. The nurse went to get another patient and through tears I tried to ask where to go and was told the waiting room.

I couldn’t even open the door easily to get my wheelchair through. Once I found my way back to the waiting room, I burst into tears. I hate bloody hospitals. Hate them. I cried down the phone to Samuel who was waiting in the cold, and I cried down the phone to my sister.

My head was spinning, my neck was hurting too from slumping in the chair. And I’d been left.

The doctor called me later and he was lovely. I burst into tears because I couldn’t keep up, my brain was slow, my arms were throbbing painfully from me having fainted.

He told me I needed an x-ray but I told him I didn’t know where to go. I was scared I would get lost again. Long story short, he went and got Samuel. The doctor kept apologising and saying that I’d been failed and this shouldn’t have happened.

I left the room and cried onto Samuel. He took me to the x-ray department and helped me to stand up for the chest x-ray.

Another long story short, I have pleurisy due to a virus. I left the hospital feeling demoralised and traumatised by the whole situation. I passed the nurses who had left me and not let me even lie down…

I understand that covid has put a spanner in the works for the health service and that the majority of people are trying their absolute best in horrendously stressful circumstances… But this didn’t need to happen. It would’ve been much easier and much safer to have let Samuel in as my carer at the beginning.