Over the last five days, on X and on YouTube, I have documented the ordeal endured by my wife seeking NHS treatment for (what was) suspected deep vein thrombosis. She is now twenty-five weeks pregnant with our twin daughters.
On Sunday, she suffered a suspected blood clot and severe swelling in her left leg. She spent four hours waiting for an assessment in Urgent Care, and was seen by an African nurse who barely spoke English and made multiple spelling errors in her referral letter. A doctor then told her to make her own way to another hospital to get tested there instead.
She returned home and called the hospital, who transferred her to a maternity service, also staffed by an African woman with an indecipherable accent, who was totally indifferent to the urgency of the situation and instructed my wife to come into the hospital and wait in the Accident & Emergency department.
This was the same hospital A&E department we visited months ago, when we feared she had miscarried, which made us wait seven hours for an ultrasound scan after telling us twice we had miscarried. When the scan showed a healthy baby, they somehow missed a second baby just centimetres away. We only discovered we were having twins at a scan at another hospital a week later.
Despite low blood pressure and signs of deep vein thrombosis, which can result in stillbirths and stroke, she spent another three hours sat in A&E, and was denied ultrasound scans. Despite having the equipment, she was told nobody on staff could operate it. She wasn’t given an appointment for the first available scan: only a blood-thinner injection to treat the symptoms. Those injections are now being administered by me, in mornings and evenings — but the hospital failed to provide her with a prescription, and sent her home.
The nurses who gave her the injections didn’t ask essential questions, including whether she had any head injuries, which would make it unsafe to take them. She had hit her head earlier in the day on the broken toilet door in the first hospital, meaning when she came home after the injection she collapsed on the floor. She remained in the recovery position, and suffered dizziness and a headache. Acting on guidance to get a scan, we then returned to the hospital and waited for ten hours, overnight, in A&E.
Within fifteen minutes, an African triage nurse took her heart rate and temperature. He shouted at her to hurry up while she was explaining her symptoms and concerns, despite her being clearly shaken and soft-spoken. I told him to stop shouting, calmly, and he said, “You don’t talk to me like that, you do that again, and I’ll make you wait outside.” As we were walking out the door, he said, “I wasn’t shouting at you, if it seemed like I was.” His lack of compassion, comprehension, and emotional regulation makes him unfit for his job. Moments later, he called her back into the room because he didn’t take her temperature properly.
After waiting all night, despite being told there were two doctors on staff and only seven people in the queue, we were seen at 8 AM. By the time we were seen, the consultant said there was no point scanning her because she had been in hospital for so long without her symptoms worsening that she’s probably fine. In that case, it would have taken them ten minutes to check and send us home, but instead they had us wait all night in uncomfortable chairs, without food, and the only updates provided were intermittent blood pressure checks.
By Wednesday, we had spent two days calling NHS 111 and multiple hospitals to secure an ultrasound appointment, and received nothing, despite running out of the blood-thinning injections she had been prescribed, for morning and night, within a few days. We were told on Monday and Tuesday to expect a call that day, and to call back if we hadn't heard anything. We called back on Wednesday, and were treated to a woman with an indecipherable accent trying to shout over the sounds of construction work. We were then told my wife wasn't considered "Urgent" by the Radiology department, and hadn't been referred DVT clinic, despite the risk to her and the babies.
After being passed between departments, we called Maternity Triage again, and a kind English woman answered the phone, listened to everything that happened, and said she would call us back with news within half an hour. Five minutes later, she called back with a scan appointment for the following morning, and immediate follow-up with Maternity. Couldn't have been more helpful.
My wife had her ultrasound this morning. We were seen early by a radiologist also called Connor, who gave her the all clear for DVT, with any clotting abated by the blood-thinning injections. No more threat to either her or the twins, thank God. We followed up with an appointment with a doctor in the maternity ward, who confirmed any continued swelling would be caused by blood flow being compressed by the babies. We will continue to monitor her symptoms, in case they worsen; but in the meantime, my wife can return to normal life and be less stressed.
This was exactly the outcome we hoped for. We can do nothing but praise the treatment we received from specialists today. However, frontline care should still be streamlined to provide this peace of mind to parents without the relentless phone calls, trips to multiple hospitals, and overnight wait in A&E that we experienced. It's difficult to encourage people to have children when the prospect of pregnancy complications remains so daunting. It's within a competent and courageous government's power to fix the system. It doesn't have to be like this.
But the reason for this post is to thank you all for your prayers, advice, offers of support, and generosity these last few days. Politics can be dispiriting, but we are blessed and grateful to know such wonderful people.