I just experienced NHS hospital care for the first time since coming to Britain and I almost died. The failures were shocking

I recently experienced NHS hospital care for the first time.

I had abdominal pain which had been getting worse and worse over a couple of days. I could barely walk and had a high fever. I guess growing up in the Wild West of Jutland – with a dad who has heroically redeemed himself from paralysis – I've always been taught to endure life’s minor pains and toughen up (“Is your ankle sprained? OK, but if you can walk we don't need to go to the A&E.”) This time, though, my mum, who was visiting from Denmark, thought I looked so bad I had to go.

It was Saturday night around 2am, so I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking my shaky walk was perfectly normal. What wasn't normal, however, was my fainting the minute I stepped inside the A&E. I fainted flat into the doctor's arms (I guess this could have been romantic if the ambience had matched his chivalry). After a series of fainting incidents in a wheelchair and on the floor, I got upgraded to a bed on the hospital aisle, and a nurse offered me some intravenous goodies (don’t mind if I do.)

My blood pressure started to drop, and my mum - who has worked in a GP’s office for 35 years - got increasingly worried. She marched the site to catch hold of a doctor. In what seemed forever, but presumably was an hour later, a really sweet, really young, really busy gynaecologist came to look at my tummy.

My mum – convinced that I had appendicitis – made sure to mention to the doctor that her appendix is oddly placed, just in case I had inherited that from her. But the gynaecologist concluded the pain was localised around my womb, so she removed my coil and assured me it would ease the pain. She said all this trouble was likely caused by chlamydia so she would send blood tests off to check if I had an STD.

A couple of hours later, I was barely conscious. My mum was genuinely worried. GP service has given her a thick skin, so if she acknowledges someone is in pain, they most likely are. And I most definitely was in pain (what we know in retrospect is that this was probably around this time my appendix had ruptured.)

At this point, we were constantly told “The doctor will be with you soon”, and as novices to secondary healthcare, we thought that meant that the doctor would arrive in a couple of minutes. But what I now know is that “soon” typically means in a couple of hours (the longest I recall waiting from initial scream to doctor arrival is 14 hours and 48 minutes – when you’re in that kind of pain, you count in minutes.)

Night had now turned into morning. Lying in the hospital aisle, I could overhear the morning update covering car accidents, shooting victims and a couple of casualties. It was only fair that an STD suspect like me got pushed down the priority list. A nurse gave me a “you-need-to-stop-whining” smirk and a seven-day pack of antibiotics to take home.

She needed the bed and told us to leave. As I tried to resurrect myself, I passed out again. My mum confidently stepped up her game and pitched her tone to the nurse (in Danish, yes, but not to be misunderstood), and eventually, another doctor came to look at me.

The new doctor told the nurse off for trying to send me home and concluded I obviously should be admitted to the hospital. Then he gave me an injection of morphine and off I rolled – well, some hours later after waiting for a bed to become available – to the Gynaecological Ward.

On the ward, a nurse received me and went through a form with some generic questions mostly about my sex life. My mum – still adamant that I had appendicitis – reminded me once again that I should mention my genetic predisposition for an unusual appendix to the nurse. Unfortunately, the form didn’t have a box that type of extra information, so it wasn’t noted.

So there I was, in a hospital ward surrounded by 11 other sick beds. Sure, I felt terrible, but I have to admit that it was with part excitement that I was in a hospital: nothing adds a smile on your face than the chance to get down and dirty with first-hand, empirical data in your area of research (I study public health at university). The thin blue curtains designed for privacy really allowed me to get up close with my little NHS field study. Adding to this, my bed was right behind the open plan reception with a good, steady flow of action. If the pain didn’t keep me awake to conduct my 24/7 research, the nurse buzzer surely did.

Now, why didn't I cash in my fancy private medical insurance from work, you might wonder. Well, since I “was only going to be there for one night“, I thought I’d keep things simple. And what I later came to discover was this: even if you have private medical insurance, you still depend on the NHS as the gatekeeper to make the diagnosis. Until that’s figured out, you are left in a Kafkaesque limbo.

I still hadn’t had a convincing diagnosis other than “inflammation of the pelvis” and “we are still waiting to get your STD results back”. And a couple of days later when I finally got authorisation to go private, my situation was so critical that it was too dangerous to transfer me anywhere (adding to this, the private section was full).

With no better beds available in the hospital, I stayed put at gynae for six days. Being a patient here means being patient, quite literally. You wait to see a doctor to refer you for a scan. Then you wait a day to get the scan. Then someone more urgent (understandably) takes your time slot. Then you get an ultrasound scan which shows nothing other than “a lot of inflammation” so you wait for another type of scan and so forth.

Meanwhile, days pass and during the waiting time you stay busy with pain cramps or palliative treatment like shooting morphine with the nurses. Or waiting in the toilet queue: we were 12 girls sharing one toilet without a seat and hygiene levels similar to a Glastonbury loo (so if you didn't have a gynae diagnosis, you’ll probably end up with one). It almost felt like an upgrade to get a catheter.

In my case, the waiting time meant that my burst appendix (yet to be diagnosed) had evolved into a nasty case of peritonitis. This is where the appendix pumps out infection into the pelvis. Since inflammation is not something your organs enjoy being immersed in, it is a serious, life-threatening situation that gets worse by the hour – usually fatal within days.

And so, lying with that undiscovered for four days, my tummy grew into what looked like I was about to give birth to a set of twins. Despite maxing out on antibiotics, my CRP infection marker had also skyrocketed from 60 to 420 on day four (you are sick at over 10, and very sick at over 100). I’ve later discovered that a doctor in a hurry accidentally noted my CRP to be “39” instead of 360. Hence nobody reacted till the day after.

When a doctor finally arrived, it was for a three-minute tornado session always featuring the question: “On a scale from 1-10, how is your pain?” I don't relate very well to numbers and find it even harder to be decisive 10 seconds after a rectal examination. Assuming ”0“ is a Hollywood waxing, and ”10“ is death, my experienced pain level could only be topped with five rusty swords through my chest and dipping my face in burning napalm (which would be a solid 9). So I typically decided to go for 8.5.

I subsequently found out that you don’t get prioritised until you say 10.

Late in the evening on day four, I got lucky. A caring doctor looked at me in a way you don't ever want a doctor to look at you. She went out of her way to get a general surgeon to present a second opinion and they concluded I needed to go into theatre immediately.

”Immediately“ meant 17 hours later. ”So sorry, there has been a big car accident; these people need to be operated first.” I didn’t get upset. Even if I had the energy, I couldn’t: It felt I was in an emergency like the Titanic with too few safety boats for the passengers. I remember I was very scared yet surprisingly calm. I just folded my hands and prayed for everyone in surgery and thought about puppies, ponies and people I love

Eventually, I had my operation. My appendix was removed (it was indeed upside down like my mum’s) and my tummy drained for the peritonitis. The following days, when I was critically ill, are a blur. I could barely move and saw fleeting images of Jack the Ripper all over the blue hospital curtain. A couple of days later when my situation was stable, I finally got transferred to a quiet room in the private wing where I could rest and recover. After 12 days in hospital, I got discharged.

I thought I would be back to normal after a couple of weeks, but giving peritonitis free rein to hang around your internal organs takes its toll. I've been in and out of the hospital for the past four months with a cacophony of all complications you can think of between my knees and nipples.

A couple of weeks ago, I was hospitalised for the third time and had my – hopefully – last surgery where they removed more than a dozen awfully painful adhesions across my bowel. Although I still experience two to three hours a day of severe, bedridden pain, I hope I can return with full vigour soon (I don’t dare to think about the timeline had I still been with NHS today). I only have five small scars, and to the delight of my vanity, my post-surgery belly button is prettier than ever before.

Today I know I was lucky to survive this. I don't want to dwell on it, but I think it is especially scary that my diagnoses were rather normal, yet weren’t attended to until I was on the brink of death. I'm a young, healthy person (give or take a drink or five), I was in situ in a hospital when my appendix ruptured, and even after I was properly determined critical, my treatment was still pending. I may have certainly been unlucky in how the events unfolded. But the amount of mistakes, examples of neglect, and shocking delays seem, from anecdotal evidence, to be terrifyingly common in the NHS today.

None of this is intended to criticise the fantastic, caring, overworked doctors and nurses who attended to me. And I am fundamentally pro the model of universal healthcare for all. But the only advice I could honestly give is to hurry up and get private medical insurance till this crisis is over. In my case, had I gone straight to private, I would have been scanned earlier (and presumably diagnosed and operated earlier and avoided the last four months of complications and further operations).

Put simply, one of the finest examples of a healthcare system is currently slipping away. The NHS has hit a humanitarian crisis and I wouldn’t advise anyone to risk their lives to see for themselves. Quite clearly, action is needed now by British politicians before it’s too late.