This is mild, by NHS standards. Remember little Tilly Merrell? The NHS’ sorry excuses for doctors had “diagnosed” her in early infancy as having a condition which made any food she swallowed go into her lungs instead of her stomach. They promptly declared it incurable, drilled a hole through her back into her stomach, and she was tube fed for the next 7+ years, never allowed to eat meals with her family, the kitchen door locked for her protection, and wore a special food-pumping back-pack to school every day. Needless to say, a child with this arrangement would have been in regular contact with medical professionals year in and year out. It took a trip to doctors in the US to find out that there was NOTHING wrong with her (apart from swollen tonsils, which weren’t giving her any trouble as she wolfed down the newly-allowed food). The only cure that was needed was to start giving her food to eat and close up the hole in her back that the idiot NHS “doctors” had made.
Two particularly scary points:
1) Her plight had already received extensive national media coverage in the UK, yet no UK doctors had come forward to examine her and correctly identify the non-existent problem. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hereford/worcs/4094575.stm
2) The poor little girl had been sneaking bits of food for years — and had no doubt tried to tell adults that nothing bad happened when she did this, but been dismissed as a little girl expressing understandable fantasies. So she grew up knowing that all the adults in her life were clueless about this supposed medical condition that dominated her life.
The psychological damage to this little must have been huge. One can only hope that when she grows up, she unleashes years of simmering rage onto her country’s socialized medicine system.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/24/MNG7FBG7241.DTL
I do remember something of that. How sad, and yet, how wonderful that she learned about clueless government employees at a young age. I hope she translates that into a positive outlook about herself and an askance view toward self-policed “professionals” that work for the government.
Some folks never learn this.
That is TRAGIC!
I’d never heard about this.
Thank you for posting this.
A young British woman was in a car accident. She was informed that her spinal cord had been severed, and she would spend the rest of her life in a wheel chair.
The young woman told the doctors that she had sensation in her legs and feet, but they told her that was phantom pain. And the woman spent 9 (or 14) years in a wheel chair, still claiming to feel sensation, but never (apparently) making an effort to move her feet. Not even to try to get out of the chair and walk-she apparently never tried to just move her feet around while sitting in the chair.
Then a doctor took a closer look at her XRays, and discovered her spine hadn't been completely severed...It was injured, but he believed she could walk again, after PT and a course with braces and crutches.
And events proved him correct-the woman got out of her chair and (eventually) walked on her own, aided only by a cane.
This BTW is NOT a "scary UK NHS" story-it's a story about what can happen to people who think doctors are deities rather than highly trained, professional human beings. And if they say you're paralyzed, but you think you can feel sensation...Maybe you should try to wriggle your toes every now and again, just to see.
(PS . The woman said she bore the doctors no ill will, and was just grateful to have the chance to interact more fully with her young daughter, born IIRC only a year or two before the accident.)