![[Image description: Ellie sits on the sofa in a living room with windows in the background being administered entonox via a tube to her mouth from a bag on the floor. In the middle of the picture a paramedic stands with his back to the camera and in the foreground a grey coffee table has a light grey laptop on it with an NHS sticker on it].](https://chronicallyawesome.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/IMG_20210326_162952_749-848x300.jpg)
A few weeks ago I dislocated my hip. Generally dislocations aren’t a big event for me, I have hypermobile Ehlers’ Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), which causes extreme laxity in the joints, and as such partial dislocations in particular are a regular occurrence.
The problem with this dislocation was that it was the hip I had replaced a couple of years ago, and when I reached down to pick something up off the floor, the ominous ‘pop’ I heard was followed by excruciating pain and an inability to stand up straight again. This dislocation meant a trip to hospital.
I want to say that the ambulance staff were brilliant and with an array of painkillers we were soon on our way to A&E. As we travelled I admitted to the paramedic I was feeling anxious, not about what damage I might have done, but about meeting a new doctor. Because in my experience, new doctors usually spell trouble.
[Image description: Ellie sits on the sofa in a living room with windows in the background being administered entonox via a tube to her mouth from a bag on the floor. In the middle of the picture a paramedic stands with his back to the camera and in the foreground a grey coffee table has a light grey laptop on it with an NHS sticker on it].
![[Image description: Ellie sits on the sofa in a living room with windows in the background being administered entonox via a tube to her mouth from a bag on the floor. In the middle of the picture a paramedic stands with his back to the camera and in the foreground a grey coffee table has a light grey laptop on it with an NHS sticker on it].](https://chronicallyawesome.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/IMG_20210326_162952_749.jpg)
What a prophecy I had made.
It started out well – he listened to my history, he reassured me that he believed me when I said I was in a huge amount of pain, told me I was right in coming to hospital. There was a plan involving x-rays and an orthopaedic consultation and he even said he’d wait to do an examination until after the x-rays so I only had to transfer to the bed once. Great!
But that exam never happened. When the x-rays came back clear, he told me I was ready to go home. To be clear, I’d had no physical examination at all. I wasn’t asked where it hurt, or requested to move my leg. I wasn’t transferred out of the wheelchair, no one checked for discrepancies in my legs, literally no physical examination happened aside from the x-ray, despite my insistence that there was soft tissue damage (I have experience with this).
It gets worse. Just before I was wheeled into x-ray, I asked for some more pain medication. He said it wouldn’t be a problem and he’d arrange that for me for when I came back. Next thing I know, I’m being discharged with no pain medication at all.
I couldn’t believe it.
When I asked why, the doctor said I had a complicated medical history, and he didn’t know what to give me that wouldn’t drop my respiratory rate. I said that I was in 9 out of 10 pain, that the pain medication I had at home hadn’t helped at all, and he said
![[Image Description: Ellie takes a selfie from below. She has a grey top on, a blue blanket around her shoulder and a blue mask on her face. She has glasses on and her head resting on her hand. In the background is a wood-plank ceiling with a light shining brightly.]](https://chronicallyawesome.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/20210225_220541-scaled.jpg)
“You’re going to have to put up with it.”
Worse, when I asked if I’d have been given pain medication if I’d had no complex medical history, he said yes, he’d have given me strong pain medication to go home with.
Like I said, I couldn’t believe it, I still can’t. I wasn’t being given pain medication because I am chronically ill. Because I am complicated, out of the ordinary, it was OK to send me home in pain that made me sob as I climbed back into the wheelchair to wait in the waiting room until my husband arrived to take me home.
[Image Description: Ellie takes a selfie from below. She has a grey top on, a blue blanket around her shoulder and a blue mask on her face. She has glasses on and her head resting on her hand. In the background is a wood-plank ceiling with a light shining brightly.]
Just a short time earlier, paramedics had administered morphine and Entonox (gas and air) in recognition of the levels of pain I was experiencing, and now I was told I qualified for no pain relief, that I just had to live with it. I wasn’t even given crutches.
It wasn’t just being treated differently either. It was the lack of effort. It can’t have been more than 2 or 3 minutes between my leaving x-ray and him coming to discharge me. In that time had he really assessed my options for pain medication on discharge? It felt like he hadn’t even tried to find a way to reduce my pain, that it was OK to send me home like this.
All I really wanted was him to fight even a little to help my pain. Instead I felt penalised for being ill. Punished. Worth less of a doctor’s time than someone who is healthy. Less entitled to being relieved of pain.
And this is why the chronic illness community avoids seeking medical help. Because situations like this aren’t even a surprise anymore, they’re a depressing, common reality. And it’s doing so much harm. What I feel goes beyond hurt and anger, I’ve been experiencing flashbacks and other symptoms of trauma since my evening in A&E. I’m not alone; in research that Chronically Awesome did at the end of 2019, 41% of the respondents said they had experienced symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of their illness or treatment.
When are places of treatment going to become places of safety? When will we be able to see a new doctor without the anxiety that we’ll be judged out of hand, or not given the time to be understood, or pre-emptively treated as if we’re victims of the opioid crisis? When will we be able to rely on doctors to treat us equally, as humans who all want to be as free from pain as is possible? When will we stop being harmed in the process of seeking help?
And this is why the chronic illness community avoids seeking medical help. Because situations like this aren’t even a surprise anymore, they’re a depressing, common reality. And it’s doing so much harm. What I feel goes beyond hurt and anger, I’ve been experiencing flashbacks and other symptoms of trauma since my evening in A&E. I’m not alone; in research that Chronically Awesome did at the end of 2019, 41% of the respondents said they had experienced symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of their illness or treatment.
![[Image Description: A square box with the Chronically Awesome logo at the top says “What you told us: 41% of us have experienced symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of our illness and/or treatment” with smaller writing underneath. Behind the box is a background of vertical lines alternating yellow and teal.]](https://chronicallyawesome.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/5-17.40.49.png)
When are places of treatment going to become places of safety? When will we be able to see a new doctor without the anxiety that we’ll be judged out of hand, or not given the time to be understood, or pre-emptively treated as if we’re victims of the opioid crisis? When will we be able to rely on doctors to treat us equally, as humans who all want to be as free from pain as is possible? When will we stop being harmed in the process of seeking help?
[Image Description: A square box with the Chronically Awesome logo at the top says “What you told us: 41% of us have experienced symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of our illness and/or treatment” with smaller writing underneath. Behind the box is a background of vertical lines alternating yellow and teal.]
