Jacob was getting dizzy and fainting (Picture: Jacob Hawley)
If your health is like a car, the NHS is a body shop.
In theory, their job is to fit you up and send you back out sparkling new, no matter what state you arrive on their forecourt in. But in practise, this particular body shop has been understaffed and underfunded for too long for anyone to expect it to function properly anymore.
Unfortunately, I learned this reality all too well recently.
Growing up, I had the usual sprained wrist, bumped head, sore ankle – quick in-and-out jobs to A&E while my mum and dad promised me they were selling my BMX. These visits to the hospital were never particularly pleasant, but I always left patched up and satisfied that the health service was there for me should I ever need it.
Most of us were raised with this in Britain. It was a subconscious feeling that the NHS is a safety net beneath us, a reliable service that’s always there should we ever need it.
That changed for me when my partner and I welcomed our daughter, Luna, three years ago.
She was born in our local hospital after my partner laboured at home for as long as possible – in truth, we were keen to avoid the hospital due to some of the horror stories we’d heard.
Jacob playing with Luna on the beach (Picture: Jacob Hawley)
Nine days after her birth, she had to return to hospital with an infection in her kidney that was so serious she was losing consciousness.
My partner, Alannah – who is a midwife, but spent many years also working as a nurse – helped call the shots throughout this whole experience.
She understood when to turn things down, when to question the advice we were being given, when to ask to be referred to different teams, and when to push for more urgency from doctors and consultants. I would have just blindly done whatever the doctors said.
It felt invaluable having her there, to return to the car analogy it felt as though she were driving the whole thing as the staff at the hospital just couldn’t; they were so stretched and the system had just hit breaking point.
It was frightening to see – I’m a nervous flyer but I calm my nerves when I fly by watching the airline staff and thinking ‘if they’re not worried, why should I be?’ The staff within the NHS had no such calm and it’s hard not to let that effect you as a patient.
Then I recently had my own health scares.
Earlier this year, I had recurring bouts of dizziness and fainting. They were quick enough and to be honest, I was so busy with work and family that I didn’t give them the attention I should have done. I’d feel faint, I’d collapse, I’d get up and carry on.
Jacob has recently had his own health scares (Picture: Jacob Hawley)
I made a call to 111 and was basically told to either come and sit and wait in A&E for hours, or rest and hope it gets better.
I booked in to see a GP, they told me that my symptoms were curious but the waiting time for further tests were so long that I should just wait and see if I start feeling better. After the fifth time collapsing, my girlfriend insisted we phone an ambulance.
When I eventually went into hospital in February, the care I was being given felt muddled – information hadn’t been passed on from my calls to 111 or my visit to my GP, and there was confusion as I was transferred between different doctors and nurses.
I was placed on a mixed ward due to lack of beds, to the irritation of the women on the ward. On top of that, the only two toilets were dirty with either faeces or blood and the nurses told us they couldn’t be cleaned as they were understaffed.
I went in on a Friday, but the consultants clocked off at 5pm. From there – through the weekend – I was in the hands of junior doctors, who felt overstretched and under prepared.
We’re all aware of how difficult a working environment the NHS has become – including the constant stripping of funding with the threat of privatisation overshadowing the entire service – but it doesn’t stop you feeling frustrated as a patient.
Jacob is thankful for our NHS and the people who work in it (Picture: Jacob Hawley)
I was constantly on a heart monitor, though the staff didn’t really have the time to keep an eye on what the monitor was telling them. Every time I got tired or sleepy my heart rate would drop to a point that an alarm would go off on the monitor. I would have to call the nurses to tell them about this.
They informed me they couldn’t do anything aside from inform the doctors in the morning. So I was stuck in this pattern of feeling tired, nearly falling asleep, my heart rate dropping and then an alarm going off, waking me up.
The next morning, one of the nurses informed me that my heart rate monitor was suggesting I’d had a heart attack. Then they informed me that, actually, they’d made a mistake when attaching the cables, and I probably hadn’t had a heart attack.
The annoying thing was that aside from the heart rate monitor going off, I felt fine. I sat and worked on my laptop, nipped down to the café when it opened, always asking the staff if they wanted anything – I basically felt like I was treating it like a co-working space.
On Monday, I finally had a CT and MRI scan that confirmed I didn’t have any brain issues. That’s when I was placed in a private ward that hadn’t been used for patients until recently.
As a result, staff couldn’t figure out how to turn any of the lights off at night and thus I couldn’t sleep. So I had to make the difficult decision to discharge myself.
Now I’m in the process of trying to get my GP to refer me to a cardiologist, but this is taking forever due to long waiting times for specialists.
It’s been suggested a few times by the doctors that stress could be contributing to my symptoms. Ironically, thinking you’ve had a heart attack, then being told you haven’t, then realising you’re going to need to spend weeks chasing different doctors and being added to different waiting lists, only adds to that stress.
Of course, I’m thankful for our NHS and the people who work in it. But I have felt frustrations with the service, the bureaucracy and even the staff at times.
It feels imperative to aim our frustrations at the people who have broken our health service and removed our safety net.
We all love the NHS, it’s the one thing that makes me feel unashamedly patriotic, as a country we celebrate it whenever we can – yet recent polls show that the public satisfaction with the NHS is at an all time low under this government.
Unfortunately, I have no choice but to believe that we can no longer say our health service can keep us healthy or even safe.
Staff and services are drowning – and it’s the patients like me who are suffering.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
Share your views in the comments below.