"A very distressing visit"

Anything else?

Me and my partner attended a&e due to severe pain in my abdomen whilst in my first trimester. We fully understood that priority cases would be seen first but we ended up waiting 4 hours in total for an on call doctor to give us any information. The time spent in the waiting room was actually not too bad, and we were seen by an absolutely lovely nurse, however once we had seen her we were back in the waiting room for another 2 hours, then when a doctor came to get us he examined me and then left us alone in the examination room for over an hour. Again, it was a busy time and I understood other priority cases would be coming in, but I was getting very distressed. When the doctor returned he explained that he didn't think I had appendicitis (which was not a concern of ours) and that they were treating the pain as a stable ectopic pregnancy. We were both absolutely and openly devastated as this would obviously mean losing the baby. He told us I was in no immediate danger and we would go for a scan 2 days later. At this point my partner had to ask several times and in several different ways whether there was anything else it could be, when the doctor finally told us it might be nothing at all and could be completely normal! Suffice to say we spent the next 2 days waiting for the scan feeling incredibly stressed and fortunately it turned out to be nothing. For the doctor to only tell me the worst possible case scenario and not offer any sort of positive without being cajoled into it I found very upsetting. I know that women in their first pregnancy probably come in all the time with what turns out to be nothing, but it's such a scary time and some medical reassurance was desperately needed.