The last couple of months have been a whirlwind. It started with My husband Wayne coming down with a high fever and pain in his abdomen. A couple of days later, he felt better and went back to work. Two weeks later, it came back only worse. The fever was 104 for 5 days and the pain was getting progressively worse. We took him to the doctor (our GP didn't have any available appointments and we saw a doctor we had never seen before). He talked to Wayne about his symptoms without even an exam and concluded he had a urinary track infection. He wrote him a prescription for some antibiotics and told him to leave a urine sample on his way out. We were to call for the results in a few days.
The following day, Wayne was in a lot of pain. He'd had the high fever for 5 days and I was terribly worried and sure it was not a urinary track infection. I wanted to take him to the emergency room and he kept saying, lets just wait until the test results come in. By the end of the day, I called an ambulance.
The paramedic that came talked to Wayne and when he heard the doctor thought it was a urinary track infection, decided that it wasn't an emergency after all and told us he wasn't going to get an ambulance to take him in. He told us that 'A&E (the British version of the ER) stood for accident and emergency and this was neither'. He said even if he took him in, he would have to sit in the waiting room just like everyone else. He then told us it was up to us. I said to him, 'how do you know it's not his appendix??' he replied with, 'because I've had appendicitis and that's not what this is.' In the end, we asked him to leave if he wasn't going to take him in and I slammed the door in his face. I wanted to kill the man with my bare hands, but at the time, I had bigger fish to fry.
It was 6pm on a Friday night. My GP's office was about to close. I called in a desperate attempt to get the night doctor to see Wayne. When they heard what was happening, they had our doctor call us right back. When he heard that the doctor the day before didn't even examine Wayne and the ambulance had left without him, he said he'd be right over. Within 30 minutes, our doctor was standing at our doorstep. Unbelievable...
To be continued in the next post - - -
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