Sue's Myeloma Journey
The GP wanted me to have a CT scan, as a chest X-ray showed a small fuzzy area at the top of one lung that they wanted a better look at. The NHS waiting time for a CT scan was very long, so I thought, OK well let’s go private for this one. So I got a referral letter from the GP and made an appointment with Spire hospital in Wrexham for the CT scan to be carried out on 10th October.
The scan was carried out, they give you something into your bloodsteam to make it work better, and what they tell you is that you will get a “warm” feeling in the groin. What that actually meant was that you suddenly feel that you’ve wet yourself!!
The radiologist said that the results would be with my GP in about 7 days. So I duly contacted the GP but no results, and this went on for several weeks, during which time I would contact the GP, no results, so then get back to Spire to chase them up, but still nothing happened, and the customer feedback from Spire was non-existant!
Finally, after three weeks, I filed an official complaint with Spire, but that would take 20 days to go through the process but was not supposed to make any difference to what I was complaining about.
After four weeks with no result, we then decided to drive to Spire at Wrexham to pitch up at reception with my complaint and announce that we were not leaving until we got my scan results. So a radiologist did come out to talk to us and announced that the consultant had gone on holiday without reviewing the scan, and he had only just come back from holiday, but that was ridiculous, I mean four weeks (!) and surely there must have been someone else as backup for this sort of situation, you would think….
Funnily enough, the scan results magically appeared with the GP that same afternoon.
The saga continued though, as I did not receive any communication from the appeal process, so I submitted a further complaint in writing directly to the hospital to express how dissatisfied I was with my whole experience at Spire Hospital. I subsequently received a letter confirming that I did not have a First Class Experience (!!). and offering me a 20% discount on the cost of the scan, which is acceptable, but really this should not have happened in the first place.
And in the end, all the CT scan showed was that I had a small amount of scarring on one lung, which is probably from a previous chest infection, so that accounts for the fact that when I get a cold, it usually results in a cough. But the fact that the initial chest X-ray showed something unidentified was quite worrying at the time, especially as the GP rang me about it while I was in the car (but fortunately parked at the time)……..