Yep, you guessed it; Tina just had to sample Ipswich’s most excellent doctors in the A&E department. I hadn’t been well for a good two weeks now, and after various visits to the local doctors, I hadn’t got any further then I was at the start. Just pills to sort out my symptoms, and no real explanation to the cause of my pain.
So I’ll start at the beginning. I had my gallbladder out around three years ago, this was a great relief to me at the time, as those pesky stones and been messing up my body for a long time. So I had it removed, and it left me with a mild irritation surrounding food. Just a dull pain in my lower chest whenever I was starving, or when I had eaten high fatty foods. Easy to deal with, and no real problem but at Christmas (2015), it started to get worse, and of course I went the doctor and got a pill to take every day for it. Fun times, I know! But as far as I knew, it was all sorted as long as I took the pill. Well, as you might have guessed, things didn’t work out like that. The pain got worse, and about 3 weeks ago I reached breaking point.
The day I got the almighty pains, was the same day I got my results for my ultrasound chest scan from the clinic. They couldn’t see any signs of anything being abnormal. WTF is what I said, I was almost crippled over and nothing could be seen!! I don’t blame the doctor at the local practice, but clearly, this wasn’t just an old gallbladder related problem, but something else was amiss.
Lee insisted I go to A&E, I said no because every test was coming back as nothing was wrong, and as I wasn’t totally sure how a British citizen could even go to A&E, I didn’t want to be seen as wasting their time! Yeah, yeah I know right, what a stupid person I am. But it’s how I felt at the time, Lee wasn’t taking no as an answer, and even going against the doctor’s advice he made me go.
So here I was, luckily enough we had already registered for Medicare cards at the start of our trip. So we could just hand it over, and give them a description of what was wrong with me, thank god for forward thinking.
Literally, within 5 minutes they were giving me pain pills, and a gastro gel for easing the pain I was in, thank god, a little light relief. They then sat me back in the waiting room, a doctor will be with you shortly they said! Shortly, in England, this means a good few hours, fabulous, just fabulous and few hours to watch all the new people come in who are sicker than me, get seen first. Yay! Can’t wait for that.
How wrong was I! I probably waited another 5 minutes, if that. My name was called, huh, what, me! Already! Hell yes! They said my name again! Tina Bennett, ooooh that’s me! They assessed me, and I was seen by a fantastic ER doctor, it was clear she was in charge of the unit and diagnosed me within a few moments, with two possible problems. The first being Pancreatitis and the second was a possible stomach ulcer. She put me even stronger painkillers, an IV and I had only been in the place 15 minutes. It was so refreshing to be treated with such professionalism. I was then moved onto the main A&E ward, being taken care of by the nurses there until my blood results came back. Another doctor came, he confirmed that it was indeed a stomach ulcer and that he was going to start on the course of treatment right away. Oh my god! So I wasn’t making it up, there was something wrong with me, and it was now going to get sorted. Yay. He also mentioned that it’s very difficult to diagnose when on the pills I had been given to take for it back in England, I would need an additional test in four weeks to see if it was a peptic ulcer. Oh, the joys but at least I was going to get some light relief from now on.
So now I’m three weeks down the line, and although it hasn’t been smooth sailing all the way, I’ve definitely seen a marked improvement in my health, even though I’m not completely finished with the whole process, I just wanted to say a massive thank you to the people helped me on that day. Thank you, thank you so much.