Should we ever meet, it would be interesting to compare notes Haywain. I became seriously ill in January and now have a chronic heart problem.
I have had many hospital appointments and a 3 day stay. All the people I have encountered have been good, or excellent. The system however is a mess. At least four important referrals or procedures would probably not have been made, or carried out, had I not chased them up. What I mean by that is that I phoned about appointments I was waiting for to be told that they were not in the system.
The first one of these was the referral to cardiology from the respiratory team.
Another I didn't know about so couldn't follow up - I should have been booked for a heart MRI when I left hospital in February. It never happened. When I saw a consultant at the end of April, he added a footnote to my GP letter, addressed to a consultant at another hospital, requesting an expedited MRI for me.
I thought the chances of this request being picked up, being in a postscript after the signature on a c.c. of the letter, were low. After two weeks I rang the hospital concerned to be told they had no record of a request (this was one of the four instances). I scanned the letter myself and emailed it to them, and got the appointment.
I honestly think that had I patiently (hoho) waited for things to take their course, I would be dead.
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