Care

To look after someone. To show them you are bothered. To listen, to empathise, to show understanding. To do what you can to help.

A hug, a smile, a sympathetic tone. A small bunch of flowers, a card. Not fussing. Just being there. Kind words. Messages that show that although people don't know how it feels, they understand that I need some care.

I have lots of caring, wonderful people around me. I thank the universe for them being here, at this time, in this space, with me.

However, I need to rant, and I hope that you will all forgive me this little moment.

For all of the care that I am surrounded by, which is invaluable, it is not the only care I need. I need professional care. I need to be heard and for someone with the professional capacity to do something to help me to actually do so. It is beyond doubt that there are countless people out there who can help me. I'm just struggling to find them.

Take last night. You might have gathered from the concise nature of my blip that I was struggling. I experienced really acute pain in my abdomen mid evening that reduced me to tears, that made me dizzy and nauseous and that really made me think that I needed urgent care. But still I hesitated to take myself to the hospital as I also thought that the pain would pass in a couple of hours and then I would feel a fraud to be sat in a hospital not experiencing excruciating pain right at that moment.

Instead, I used the NHS online service and following the questions, was told that I would receive a callback within an hour. Two hours later, no call back, I was about to go to bed when the phone rang.

On the end of it, an angel. Palpable relief flowed through me as I spoke with a wonderful nurse, who listened and HEARD me, who took my history, not just my immediate symptoms and who expressed surprise and a degree of dismay at what appeared to be the lack of action on my behalf to help me find a solution or a way to manage whatever is causing this chronic pelvic and abdominal pain. Twenty minutes later, she told me that she was arranging an appointment to see the urgent care out of hours service at the hospital. Just before midnight I was in the hospital.

My faith and hope soon drained from me when I realised that the Doctor who was on the 'urgent care' service clearly didn't want to be there. No eye contact, short tone, curt, impersonal and lacking in any sort of professional courtesy. Feeling like I was not being listened to, I was close to tears again, compounded by the still continuing pain. A cursory exam - "lie on the bed and point to where the pain is right now" - then a subsequent SINGLE PRESS on that sole location - to be told "I can't feel anything there and your urine test shows no infection so I have no idea what the problem is".

He then received a text message on his telephone and replied to it whilst I sat and waited to hear further pearls of reassuring wisdom from him.

None. Just a prescription for some antibiotics "just in case you do have an infection" ...but apparently I don't because the urine test says I don't and that means there's nothing wrong with me, right?

What is the point of the antibiotics if there is nothing to treat?

Urgent care, last night, consisted of 15 minutes drive to the hospital, a grand total of 4 minutes with the Doctor, and 15 minutes drive home.

For this I pay my taxes?

So tonight, my pain levels are high again, but my frustration is higher, and that seems to have raised my tolerance of pain and discomfort to another level higher again. I have this grim determination that I am not going to give in, despite every fibre of my being screaming at me to just crawl into bed and not come out again.

The strength and determination comes from the real care that I am receiving.

I hope somewhere along this dark, bumpy road, I bump into one of the medical professionals out there who really do know what care means.