It's beginning to feel like groundhog day. Symptoms flared up badly again yesterday afternoon. Went to local UTC as instructed. Saw a doctor who said he felt I had a serious infection. He thought it possible that my antibiotics weren't working. The problem is that my local UTC is a tiny site, they don't even do blood tests. So I get urgently referred to A&E. Not at the nearest hospital, back to the one 45 miles away where they have the MaxFac clinic, and a consultant is on 24 hour call.
Quickly popped home for an overnight bag, just in case, and food and drinks for H. Then to the petrol station to fill the tank yet again. Finally got to A&E at 8pm last night. They were expecting me so I bypassed the waiting room and was admitted to the minor A&E ward. Saw the triage nurse and and the A&E doctor pretty quickly. I was added to the queue for blood tests and put on sepsis watch. Got the blood test done at 10pm and then the wait began.
What is frightening in A&E is the volume of patients and the seriousness of their conditions. I dread to think what was going on in the major A&E ward, the one where the ambulance patients go into. Lots of alarms going off and staff running about. By midnight it must have been full in there as the ambulance staff started bringing patients into our minor ward. There's a screen on the wall with the number of patients and the estimated wait time. We hit 100 patients just after midnight.
Then around 1am this morning a patient got brought in by ambulance and was left on a chair near where I was sitting. His condition suddenly deteriorated and myself and a couple of other people started shouting for help. Nurses arrived quickly but by then he was collapsed on the floor. A resus trolley arrived and the patients all had to leave the ward and go and sit in the waiting room. We were left there for around half an hour.
Eventually my blood test results came back and I had a MaxFac review. No sign of infection, discharged at 4am. Fortunately little traffic on the roads and made it home just after 5am. Both exhausted and straight to bed. Managed to sleep till nearly 11am this morning.
