Is care in A&E good enough?

As some of you know, I had my gallbladder out on the 17th March and was released the same day (Tuesday). By Friday, I had become really sick and was taken back in by Ambulance. The paramedics were amazing, they really took care of me and my mum who must have been out of her mind. They calmed me down, told me that I wasn't too hot but had a dangerously low body temp and just let my head sit where I was getting a draft.

But the in the hospital it was nuts, typical for a weekend in A&E but that's another issue. I was brought in with pain which had actually made me bite chunks out of the sick bowl that I'd been given on Tuesday in case I was sick in the car, just trying to stop myself yelling. I had really horrible pains in my chest, right down the sternum, and in my stomach. They came and went but when they were there...It was pure torture because I couldn't get pain relief until I saw a doctor, and that took about 2 hours. At one point the pain got so bad that instead of just griping the side of the trolley or folding, I was actually writhing a bit and couldn't stop myself giving a moan that sounded a lot like screaming. An old lady across from me in the corridor shouted on a nurse who came and then told me to "Stop screaming. You're scaring the other patients". Never mind how scared I was or that fact that I couldn't stop the noise, it was totally involuntary.

The old lady came in at the same time as me and walked out because she was in pain too and saw the way I'd been treated. Then they actually lost me. The call went out in the waiting room for me when I could finally see a doctor when I was on a trolley in the corridor. If my mum hadn't been there they would have assumed I had left and got the next patient.

To make the whole thing worse, walk-ins were getting at least paracetemol and ibuprofen when they saw a triage nurse and this is what the doctor gave me because he thought I was just constipated. I was just grateful to finally have something to stop it. When my body temp jumped up again, he finally decided it could be an infection and gave me morphine and anti-biotics, saying to my mum, "She must have been in a lot of pain".

This is just one hospital, I don't know if they all have the same policies in A&E but is this really acceptable? Is it really ok to have patients like an old man I saw, who had an oxygen mask, to be left in corridors without pain relief for upwards of two hours? And what level of care are you getting while in pain only surpassed by that time you shattered your wrist and forearm is simply to be told to shut up? What's going on? It's the National Health Service, something we all pay for to be there when we need it, so why is it letting us down?