It 'aint broke, so don't fix it!

Bloody Bureaucracy!

Fall one; I'm in some pain but it dies down. I get back home and three day's later, it's not much better, so I think I'd better get it checked just in case. I go to the University College Hospital (UCH) A&E for a check up, they x-ray my wrist, and it's not broken, so I go home. Alls good.

Fall two; Now I am in major pain. I faint from pain. The bicycle ambulance paramedic man tells me it's not broken so just take loads of pain killers and go home. The pain doesn't go away though, it just keeps going and going and going... so I look it up on the ww web. This marvelous device tells me I may have a possible grade 2 or 3 sprain, with minor or major ligament damage, which may or may not require a surgical repair. Hummm... probably better do something about that. So three days ago I registered for a GP, and today I go to my GP for a check up, and get sent to a nurse instead. She tells me to go to UCH A&E for another check up, yes she thinks it's ligament damage too, but I'd need to go to the hospital to get a referral to an ortho specialist & verification that it's actually not broken this time. So I go back to UCH A&E. After a half hour wait, in thirty seconds flat the doctor tells me that yes, the nurse was right, it is ligament damage but no, I have to go to my own doctor to get a referral and no, it's still not broken. And then I wait for another two and a half hours to get a splint for my wrist so it'll be supported properly. So next Tuesday, I have to go back to see my actual GP to get a referral to go back to the UCH sports clinic... yes I'm a yo-yo.

I just looked up ligament damage on web. It's apparently fixed by time, deep tissue massage and gentle stretching exercises... ie. physio. That would be a hell of a lot easier!

Grrr...

10/01/2008 Addendum:
I think I was a tad vitriolic last night; I was in a lot of pain as they played with my arm and I ran out of drugs, really hungry as I missed my dinner time by three hours, and really grumpy as I could have cut out two steps in this whole process if I’d been more assertive and demanded to see a doctor in the first place… *sigh* Once I actually got to see the nurses and doctors at both the UCH and my GP, they were all lovely, very professional and very helpful people. And although I waited 2½ hours for the splint, it has been worth its weight in gold; I wore it to bed last night and got the first relatively good nights sleep I’ve had in two weeks, and the pain has been reduced ten-fold because the injury is now supported properly. So really, I have very little to complain about and a lot to be grateful for. The health system here is actually quite good - all except for the red-tape of course. That I could definitely do without!!!