I didnt post until now until I had stopped spitting feathers and swearing.After a long wait and lots of phone calls etc I was told I finally had a phone appt Mon5th Dec ,between 8 amd 530.
I carried my phone around like a treasured talisman all day. At 530 I called the dept. Ansafone.
All day yesterday I rang dept and booking clerk. Ansafone.
Emailed Osman,but presume he has better things to do than act as admin!
Fumed and fumed, even told the cat( total disinterest) then hubby said You will end up making yourself all stessed out. Ill drive you over there!
Then someone from booking rang. Tried to tell me no such appointment existed,I must have made a mistake!!!
They always give a precise time she said,loudly and clearly as if I was simple.
I was very proud not to use my full range of expletives and used my Deadly Low and Slow Serial Killer voice( according to ke boys when this voice,time to exit or behave!) I made it crystal clear that I will be putting in a complaint now.
I nearly mentioned that Ducky and I gave up a fluffy coffee and cake for nothing
I just thought it was new practice to give a day but not time,like my GP
Half an hour later,someone else rang me back( obviously person A had gone for a lie down) I have a phone appointment 16th Dec 10.10 am
SO! We await with bated breath on the saga...
Take care all,stay warm xxx
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wilsond
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So frustrating for you wilsond. I would have been spitting feathers too. Our GP doesn’t give a precise time either but I expect a call if they say I will get one. Fingers crossed for the 16th. Xx
Oh Wilsond , how incredibly frustrating for you! I think your restraint when dealing with ‘person A’ was remarkable in the circumstances!
I was supposed to have a telephone appointment with my GP at 8.30 am the other day. Given your experience, I’ll consider myself lucky that she eventually called me at 1.30. I’d given up by then and gone to Tescos, so had an interesting conversation about my latest ailment whilst lurking by the bread rolls. Did offer to pick up any bits of shopping for her whilst I was there but she was ok!
That made me laugh! What have we come to,discussing our health problems in the bakery aisle?I will wait with anticipation and hope on the 16th. Already have a draft email to MP written....😁😁
That reminds me of when my gp rang when I was furniture shopping with my son & I sat on a sofa in the middle of the furniture shop discussing laxatives!
Oh dear I do know how you feel, going into the shower, loo and any place you can think off, phone in hand. I did that with my surgery last Friday. First on ring back by receptionist and after that call from doctor. Another hour wait.
Happened to me. I gave my phone to my partner who never flaps. But he is so.laid back he has to slowly look at who is calling before answering by which time I'm ready to explode. Just answer it !!! I am not reasonable when waiting for a medical call back . Too much at stake. Good luck with your call next time wilsond x
Wait until I tell you about my "urgent" scan referral. Also, its nice to know they don't confine the cock ups to cardiology as I've now ended up having to have eye surgery due to being missed off opthalmology appointment lists.And to add insult to injury, they deprive us of fluffy coffee and a bun!!! We need to go on slap patrol 😁.x
Today whilst having my fruit bun and lemon tea old f**ts group meeting I received a phone call from my surgery which I had expected on Monday. Despite answering no sounds came forth and it went to voice mail.
In fairness to the others present I went outside and listened to the message which asked me to call them. Simple?
Well firstly I had to listen to a three minute recorded lecture telling me not to ask about flu or covid vaccinations as these were no longer the province of the practise and NHS Engand would be in touch. Next a long message about not being able to order repeat prescriptions on line and to ask the receptionist for on line prescription forms. Finally I was told to hold until a receptionist answered but not to be nasty or rude to them as they took abuse of their staff very seriously and would delete me from their books if I did. There followed some really crap music for about two minutes all the while I became colder and colder having failed to forsee this situiation and not taken my coat outside with me.
Eventually a real human came on the line and I explained who I was and that they had called and asked me to call them back. All this for an apointment for a three monthly blood test which is now 23rd December. No 2 sons OH 's grandfather today went in to the same practise for a booked blood test only to be told that due to staff shortages they had cancelled it. This after a ten mile drive across Devon from his home.
As Frazer would, say "We're doomed .Doomed I tell you!"
My daughter was sent a message to say she should call the number given to make an appointment for an urgent phone review. As she recently had some serious health problems and some tests she was quick to call, only to get a recorded message saying she couldn’t call that number 🤬
All enough to put you in AF 😏. The joys of uncertainty! Hope you can rearrange the fluffy coffee with Ducky and I am sure your next phone app is set in stone 🤞
What a nightmare for you (gee whizz - and having to give up cake with Ducky). On a serious note though I hope things get sorted out soon. Having to wait for a telephone appointment isn't ideal but at least it's move in the right direction (sort of).
I had telephone appointment with hospital for 17th November. Waited all day, no one called. Rang them next day to find out why. I was told they tried to ring me on the 9th November but I didn't answer. Looked back through mobile records. Yes, I did have a call on 9th November which said Private Number. I never answer those unless I've been forewarned in case they are scams. Was given new date, yesterday, waited all day again. Call came at 4.45 pm.
Oh how so very frustrating. I won’t even tell you about call with surgery pharmacist on Tuesday. Suffice to say I didn’t know whether to burst out laughing, vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party or join the COWS (chunttering old womans society). At least she didn’t want to change me from Apixaban but will check bag before leaving chemist next time just in case. Have to admit my surgery does give you a rough time they’ll call barring emergencies. Will have everything crossed for you for 16th and kippers at the ready! xxx
Had to laugh at some of the comments .Just imagining CD dancing naked in the woods.I have a neurologist phone call Scheduled for 15th after 1.
Don't really need it as the Neurologist has put me on patient initiated list as I want to get ablation out of the way first.
However I cancelled 1 appointment & if I miss 2 I was told I will be discharged and have to start again.
Although I cancelled the last one online I was sat by the bowls green in Portugal when the clinic rang to say you have an appointment for today can you take the call!
They are all at it! Had a blood truest three weeks ago ready for annual meds review. Actually saw pharmacist, got the Edoxaban bit! Did bp etc. said there’s a message here from gp to receptionists to ring you and book appointment for me to phone her!! Nothing!! Text message would I book blood test and go and stick my arm in machine in surgery!! Yeah right !
Ahhh u have all my sympathy. I finally got my op having waited nearly a year for initial consultation I was pleasantly surprised I was called in for the op after only a 5 month wait. The staff were nice but couldn't get their heads round gluten free......so three days of soup twice per day and a roll on one specialnoccasion, nothing else......as though I filled the forms in for food & had lovely choices the reality was somewhat different. Then all day waited for pharmacy for two items. They managed one. So nurse said you don't need the pain relief, desperate to finish her shift poor thing. Is she kidding? OMG given that they had to give me morphine I think that was a tadge optimistic. Mindful I can't drive for 6 weeks I insisted on the pain relied tablets. Another two hours and hey presto. A box prescribing x amount of tablets over a weeks period, the contents of which are insufficient. I didn't count the tablets before I left. I thought pharmacists were good at counting. I could cry but was too exhausted. Maybe I'll ring the local drug dealer am sure they'll supply me with some random cocktail & deliver it to my door step! Pointless contacting GP or hospital.....
So the taxi who finally came to collect me from the hospital was a young man clearly into boy racing & arrived with some lovely leather seats or low set in true sports syle.....what? Sent to collect domeone from hospital on the dpecial red phone that u ring..... Despite my yelps & multiple requests to go slowly I even begged, tore round corners & went at breakneck speed over every road hump he could find -there were many. Arrived home in agony hoping my stitches are in tack. . Only a tip persuaded him to take my bag out of his car which he wasn't best pleased over. Still I got my op after much angst. Surgeon said it was whopper when he sorted it out. Shame he didn't communicate that to the nursing staff! I'm looking forward to something more than soup from my freezer today......though the impromptu crash diet has probably helped to shift a stubborn pound or two. Every cloud and all that rot.
Personally Id stay away as much as possible.... I much prefer Dr Google at least he/she listens & I can buy online !! 🤣
Poor NHS..... its more than crumbling...its collapsing
Cos if I'd gone private I'd not have had any of this bother.....I can dream!
As for blood tests. I got a threatening letter from my GP. We have to test every 6 months. Hmm well I was tested 4 months ago and just done a lot of bloods for pre op. No that's not good enough......do the blood tests or your repeats drop. So day before my op I drive across my city as instructed to a drive through hanger (GP doesn't do blood tests anymore) there greeted by a poor nurse in multiple layers, frozen to the bone because she can only have one little fan or it blows the electrics. Shocked at my plight she said right I will scroll back as far as I can and do every single test they've listed no matter how long ago. She had a look of grim determination & despite her inhumane working conditions had cheered her solitary desk up with Xmas cheer. After she had done she offered me a lolly.
That was before the cold snap coming....I dread to think how she'll cope in the huge hanger......
The whole trip took me nearly two hours.....the GP is 5 mins away. And I know better than to ask them for pain relief as they'll happily send the prescription to the chemist 4 miles away who no longer does home deliveries......Boots! So drug dealer here I come! 🤣
What a farce! I really worry for us all its awful everywhere you hear.I hope you recovery goes well. Simple pain relief should not have to be fought over!
Wilson Thankyou. . Indeed it shouldn't. I was up most of the night with violent indigestion, felt divk.....think that last bowl of soup was not GF or its the drivers careless style or both. . If I ever have the misfortune to have to go in again I will take a box of food.
Did online Buttafly. Works OK until you need some med more immediately. Given the postal strikes etc am definitely not going back down that route. No my lovely local pharmacy has offered to help me out. Who knows my son who lives only a mile away may also do the honours for me until I can drive again. One can hope!
There is the option for your GP to mark it urgent in which case it arrives by 1st Class post but like you I didn’t take a chance on the post so ordered my last batch of meds early and daughter picked up for me. But I asked for Elequis to be prescribed for two months the same as my other meds. Needless to say I still got 56 of everything so will have to order again in 10 days to cover Christmas 🙄
One of the real problems are the shear numbers of elderly people around now and the fact we are all living longer,this was always going to be a problem ,compounded by the covid epidemic of course.
True but its not suddenly happened. When I returned to college in 1994 as mature student ( social studies) one of our first assignment was titled The ageing UK population and implications for health care!
Its also true that more peoplecare taking resources out of the nhs pot without having made much contribution. We will plod on I expect!
Well given they've known about baby boomers of the 50s for 70yrs and we've all being paying our taxes NI & pension contribution throughout our lives you would've expected better forward planning! They had plenty of notice! So the nonsense that we are a drain is somewhat erroneous given how much we've been contributing for decades to taxes etc.... I despair of the short term view piticians& government t take More likely miss spent & didn't plan is the cause of this mess!!
oh dear what a pain ! Good luck with your next appointment .
Bizzarly a friend of mine who has a painful back injury finally has an appointment with the physio but it’s a phone appointment!! Not even FaceTiming… worlds gone mad !
Hi Wilsond, I am on the same page as you!! I had a telephone consultation with my GP regarding my medication, and SHE actually made me a telephone appointment for two weeks time. Well as you can imagine, I stayed in all day and nothing!! So I rang the surgery and was told the GP thought I had made it and that I had missed the appointment. For us mere mortals to actually be able to get an appointment within two weeks is impossible! Every time I ring the surgery I’m told the earliest appointment is four to five weeks!!! I guess I was luckier than CatO4 though and not giving staff and customers the pleasure of listening to the laxative issue🤣🤣 hope you gay things sorted out.
oh dear oh dear as my granny use to say, actually she would of been more expletive than that. It annoys me so much that our time isn’t considered important but their is. Hope you get your call on time. I’m still waiting to be told by Sheffield when to stop meds including apixaban. In fact all I know is to be there at 7 am next Thursday and to of fasted from midnight. I’ve rang continuously. Did speak to a sister on the ward last week who Said give me a week and I’ll find out for you, guess what she’s not rang back either despite promising it would be by the 7th at the latest. Think I’m going to need your kipper today and patience’s of a saint. Good luck with your call back and when you get to catch up with Ducky have a double fluffy coffee and a huge lump of cake
Having just had an op in Sheffield and I take apixaban I can answer that question. Stop taking it 48hrs before. Didn't the pre-op consultation discuss your meds with you? It's about 3hrs long! You have to go into the centre of Sheffield, behind Fargate. They do height, weight, blood pressure, ecg blood tests and talk about your health. Needs and medication Warning: none of it translated across to the ward though! Brownie points for trying!
Well done for the perseverance. I would of done exactly the same.After my call which was all of 10 mins Doc said he wants me to have a monitor and maybe in again for mapping.Next day had an email telling me another call Sept 23.9 months to go grrrr.
Whenever I read these type of threads it strengthens my determination not to set foot in the UK. Apart from the fact that I could not stand the 2/3 hour wait in the security queue that friends who have come back through East Midlands or Leeds /Bradford this year have had to endure ,or that one might book the flight and then a rail strike would be announced for that day, I am actually afraid of falling ill there. We have friends who used to live in a neighbouring village here. One of the reasons they returned to live in the UK was that they had never got to grips with French and did not feel confident they could cope in a medical setting. Now they are afraid of falling ill . Actually they probably have a better chance of getting treated quickly here by someone who speaks some if not fluent English than getting any treatment at all in the UK.
Oh what a complete bummer! I sympathize -- what more can one say? It's the way of the world these days, I guess. Keeping fingies crossed that all goes well then on the 16th at exactly 10:10 a.m. on the dot!
Flippin' eck! I would be fuming too. with me it's happened the other way around. I cancelled a telephone appointment with my oncologist (this was years ago) as I had been having some problems and his secretary said she would make an appointment so that I could see him rather than a telephone appointment with someone on his team - which she did. So the day I would have been having the telephone appointment we were out in the car - Christmas shopping I think? Anyway I don't know why but my wife was driving so I answered the phone and it was the nurse for my consultation I told her no I was seeing the Dr - you can't do that I have to do this otherwise you will be taken off his list - yeah well obviously that didn't happen. Prior to that before my radiotherapy - more or less a year prior I had received an appointment to see him at a hospital I had never been to before - so went to it. Everything was running late, sat there for nearly 3 hours then the nurse called my name and as I walked off down the corridor my Dr came out and said
"What are you doing here?"
"You sent me an appointment"
"Flippin' admin" he said "Next time you get an appointment letter ring Jenny (his secretary) and check if you really need to see me. "I don't need to see you now until you start your radiotherapy"
That was a good one because my wife had booked a hotel for the night - the hospital was nearly 4 hours drive away and we had a special mid-week deal booked - she was happy my bank manager had a fit - he'd never seen a Yorkshire man spend so much in one week!
What a carry on!! The world has gone utterly mad. I was out for daily walk yesterday, and as I was passing my dental surgery, thought I’d go in and make an appointment. The receptionist told me I would have to phone in to make one, so I said ‘but I’m standing here now, can you not just make one’. ‘No’ she said ‘you’ll have to phone in’. So I went outside and phoned from just outside the door, and could see them answering the phone, and I got the appointment!!??!🤔
I got a mild version of Covid in February this year and then Long Covid hit me in late August.
Chest pains, very painful and aching muscles at the top of my arms and legs.
I managed to get an appointment at my GP surgery to have an ECG and a blood test. I was having pains at the time of the ECG and the nurse called in the GP who said I was having a 'cardiac event' and she was arranging anambulance to take me to hospital.
My wife has dementia and was sitting in the car outside so I decided that, as I wasn't feeling any worse than I had for weeks, I would be OK not to go to hospital. My GP understood and gave me a GTN spray and a box of aspirin and told me to go straight to A&E or 'phone 999 if things got worse.
She then referred me to a cardio doctor.
I (finally) got an appointment to go to the hospital last Tuesday (6th Dec) to have an Echo followed by a 24 hr monitor fitting.
Within half an hour of leaving the hospital I got chest pains - 3/10 ones -so nothing serious but still concerning.
When I got home I was talking to my son and needed to keep asking him to repeat what he said. I have hearing aids so I put them in but they made no difference so I put new batteries in them. This made no difference either and then I lost my hearing in both ears! I gradually lost my balance too.
I rang the surgery just before 6pm and was told to go to the local walk-in at the hospital near where I live.
I did this and they sent me to the main hospital A&E dept. An absolutely lovely nurse saw me after I'd been there a couple of hours and did the basic checks.
The place was heaving and there were shouting matches, arguments and a fight going on.
The nurse said that they didn't have a doctor until five hours later! An A&E dept with no Dr?
She made an appointment for me to come back the next day to see a doctor in the ENT dept.
I had to return the Holter monitor the next day so, even though my hearing mostly returned by the next morning, I went in the hope of finding out what had caused the deafness.
I saw a Dr who's English was reasonable but who didn't seem to know what to do - other than poke my ears and make them sore. He called for another Dr (his senior) who's grasp of the language was worse. He looked in my right ear and said that there was nothing wrong - why was I here? It was the tone he said it in that rattled me - very dismissive. I asked him what had caused the sudden deafness.
He said that there were no blockages and no infections and my hearing had spontaneously returned so he didn't know.
Off he went!
How he could tell that I had no infection in my inner ear, eustachion tube etc, just by poking his otoscope in for 10 seconds I don't know. My hearing has started diminishing again tonight so I've involved Dr Google but can't find an answer there. None of the causes listed there apply. Could the Echo or Holter be involved?
A few years ago I had an argument with a wine cork and it damaged my eye. I went to the hospital and saw an eye specialist and was told that there was no damage and the black things I could see were 'floaters' that must have already been there. A month later I had my eyesight checked at Specsavers and was asked if I knew that there was damage. I said I had a 'floater' but was told that this was not a floater - it was attached.
My Heart Failure was caused by a Dr prescribing Tramadol for two years with no checks or warnings that this could cause arrhythmias.
The list of errors and failures in my family alone would fill a book.
After a year of asking for help from my GP for my wife I lost faith in the system and started to research Dementia. I read a page in a book that described the symptoms of Fronto temporal lobe dementia and I knew that was what my wife had. I copied the page and took it to my Dr. He sent her for a scan and this confirmed FTD. The specialist said 3-5 years from diagnosis was the best we could hope for. This was twelve years ago and, although there is deterioration, she's still doing well.
When he retired our GP apologised for the failings of the Practice and said that all the signs were there but they missed them - even though I'd been pleading for help because I could see what was happening but knew it wasn't Alzheimer's. I even asked if there was such a thing as 'psuedo-Alzheimer's'.
Where else is there to turn to? I now use the NHS to gather information and then do my own research and act accordingly.
So yesterday my six-year-old grandson had a very high temperature and sore throat and with all the news about Strep A my daughter rang her surgery. No appointments at all, she was told to ring 111. She did and waited an hour on hold, eventually spoke to a doctor, who got her an appointment for him to be seen - at her own surgery...
I have now seen the Advanced nurse practitioner at my GP's surgery. She said that with an otoscope you can see right through the timpanic membrane to see if there is infection in the inner ear.
My sudden hearing loss is almost certainly a result of fluctuations in my BP.
The results of my recent Echo and Holter monitor are not in yet so they will contact me if there are any concerns when they get them.
In the meantime I can (selectively) take advantage of the hearing loss by ignoring SWMBO when she talks to me.😀
Oh dear, oh dear ................ not sure I should post this but hey ho ( or at this time of year maybe Ho! Ho! ). On 5th Dec I rang my sugery for a phone appointment with my GP. I made clear that I have restricted availability as I'm a strange 78 year old still working and I drive buses on College services. I work 7 till 10 in the morning and 14.45 to 17.45 in the afternoon. Could she phone me between 10.30 and 14.00. OK says the receptionist I'll pass message to GP. The Receptionist gave me a date of 9 December.
Hey guys ........... guess what ...... GP actually rang at 10.48. Amazin' !!! ......... whats more it was Friday 9th December.
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