Just another number in the health system.

As some of you know I have quite a complex health history with multiple collapsed lungs (pneumothoraxs) x12 and multiple operations to try to fix this problem. Yes, this is very unlucky!??

All this happened when I was around 19 years of age.

I am now 23 years old. Two months ago, something changed in my life. One day I was driving to work and felt a pop in my chest and needed to go to the hospital. I got taken to the hospital and had an x-ray to see if I had another pneumothorax. The x-ray come up clear. They then did a CT because they were worried about a blood clot. That also come up clear.

To cut a long story short and I have been in hospital over 27 times in the last 2 months with very similar problems. Popping in my chest, 8 out of 10 pain and struggling to breathe. Nobody took me seriously. They put it down to chronic pain even after I explained to them multiple times that I disagree with this. My GP referred me to a pain clinic and respiratory specialist. The waitlist for both were horrendous.

I ended up getting a nurse navigator. He is amazing he got my pain appointment pushed forward and is currently working on my respiratory team.

Last Friday I had to call the ambulance again. The same presentation, couldn’t breathe, a lot of pain and popping in my chest. The ambulance come to me as quickly as they could. The paramedic listened to my chest, and he couldn’t hear any lung sounds on my right side. This was terrifying. They called for the ICU paramedic to come and support them. He also got to me as quickly as he could. He has a listen to my chest and said I need to get to the hospital quickly. We rushed off to the hospital. As we were arriving to the hospital the paramedic had a listen to my chest again. All was back to normal. Perfect lung sounds.

The paramedic said he has never seen this before. We were taken into the hospital and the triage nurse said hi to me and said I could go out to the waiting room. This made me very confused as what I was presented with was very serious. I got taken out to the waiting room. Keeping in mind I was still in 8/10 pain. I went and asked for some help and the response I got was you need to wait for the doctor. 3 hours later a nurse come and got me and took me to a chair. The nurse had a listen, and she couldn’t hear full lung sounds on the left side this time. She called for the doctor to come and look over me. The response I got from the doctor was ridiculous. She didn’t have a listen or anything. She just said it was my “choric pain and I can go home now”. The nurse come over and gave me a hug and said she is so sorry for the way I am being treated. I was so upset and worried. I was treated like crap. This is not the first time I didn’t feel listening to or felt like I wasn’t taken seriously.

As you can imagine this really messed up my mental health as well. After speaking to my GP and my nurse we had decided to put in a complaint to the health ombudsman and the hospital.

I know I am not only the person out there feeling like the system has let them down. I want to share my story to let everyone that feels this way know that you aren’t alone and to keep on pushing. Some days you want to give up and stay in bed and cry and I get that but don’t give up. When you feel like you’ve hit a head-end turn directions.

Joe Horvat