So today I went to A and E with my friend following a particularly upsetting and painful drunken fall down some stairs last night. We expected she'd at least be given some painkillers and sympathy but instead we were met with judgement, a two minute appointment and she didn't even ask her questions related to back injuries such as 'do you/ did you have any pins and needles sensations?'. After getting a forty minute bus ride out of our way and time spent in the pouring rain, just for piece of mind, we were treated like drug abusing, promiscuous, arrogant teenagers that we evidently aren't. We brainstormed a multitude of potential reasons for this poor treatment, firstly that the health system in the UK is rubbish anyway and it's all about patient turnover, the quicker the appointment the better. Then we considered that being in Scotland, and considering the whole Scottish independence vote, that the Scottish nurse was anti-English. My personal opinion is that she thought we were ignorant students, out on the lash, making bad decisions and that it clearly wasn't serious because she'd waited till the next morning. At the end of the day if a Scottish housewife had consumed the same amount of alcohol, in the respectable form of wine or say a G&T after a hard day at work and had fallen down the stairs but left it till the next morning to go check it out she most definitely would have been treated with more general human empathy.
And that, my friends, really really annoys me.
Frankly, my friend was in A LOT of pain and she got treated as if she'd gone in there with a paper cut. My friend was also nervous and wanted me to go in with her, which the nurse wouldn't allow. She was treating her as if she wasn't a person, a patient yes, an inconvenience entirely, but most definitely not a real human person with feelings and concerns. Her medical 'opinion' was you're fine, get over it, take it easy for a few days. The stairs my friend fell down were stone, she had had something to drink but was in so much pain she was crying and the alcohol was numbing it already, so basically excruciating and we went home immediately after because she was in so much pain. All she wanted was to go to bed and when she woke up the pain was still there, but the nurse made her feel embarrassed and ashamed and that really isn't okay. I understand that you see plenty at your job, but it is your job and she was already suffering, so is being nice really that hard. Just easing my friend's concerns a teeny bit would have helped.
We bitched for a while then bought loads of food, ate that, bitched some more. And here I am bitching again. Well that is my rant of the day. I don't blame you if you decided to skim this.
