"Awful!"

I was taken to Tameside A&E after injuring my knee during a hockey match. The first consultant to see me tried to send me home saying it was just a sprain! Luckily the team mate who followed me to hospital was a doctor and insisted something was wrong.

After several hours (with very few painkillers) I was admitted to the day patient ward as the orthopaedic ward was full! I stayed on the day patient ward for 5 days as they had put me on the wrong waiting list. As it was a day surgery unit they did not have proper pain killer facilities meaning I had to wait a very long time to receive anything more than paracetamol or ibuprofen (resulting in some severe pain) and in terms of food I was only provided with toast. I was told I was not allowed visitors due to it being for day surgery patients although my mother insisted on visiting! ( I must say at this point the nurses were lovely and really tried their hardest to make my stay bearable).

The consultant only came to see me once and did not actually talk to me but rather through the student doctor (the student doctor was trying their best like the nurses). I did not feel involved in my care at all. When I eventually received the MRI scan it revealed that I had dislocated my knee and damaged my MPFL.

Had the consultant in A&E sent me home I could have torn the ligament completely.

I was then discharged and referred to the wrong consultant! I saw a hip specialist who then put me in the wrong type of cast which I had to have removed less than 24 hours later as I simply could not tolerate it. At this point it had been over a month since the initial injury and I hadn't received any information about whether I would be seen by the right consultant, when I could start to try and bend the knee and take the splint of or whether I would be referred to a physio. I got in contact with the PALS team who were not able to inform me how long it would be until I could see the right consultant or even whether I had successfully been put on their waiting list.

It was at this point that my mother out of pure desperation (I was getting married in June!) offered to pay for me to have a private consultation. When I saw the amazing consultant at the orthopaedic hospital in Oswestry. The consultant looked through all my scans (which took several hours and days of phone calls to PALS and my GP to arrange to be sent to them) they looked over the discharge letter and follow up appointment notes from Tameside which the consultant quickly pronounced (very diplomatically) as "not exactly correct in their diagnosis or course of treatment".

Thankfully the consultant agreed to see me via the NHS and I have now received the surgery my knee required (remember I was initially told to go home as it was probably just a sprain).

Once again the nurses were incredible as was the student doctor! The consultants seemed to want to spend as little time as possible with me and the administration must be a joke