We have known for a long time that the UK’s publicly funded healthcare system is one of the best in the world, as even the US does not have a publicly funded healthcare system like the UK. My LP had a dental surgery here, and the level of medical treatment and post-operative results were perfect, but the wait for the medical procedure was also annoying and frustrating. However, in the spring of 2008, there was another illness that caused us a lot of trouble, and we deeply experienced the difficulty of seeing a doctor in the UK, and also understood the shortcomings and deficiencies of the UK’s publicly funded medical system.
Since March 2008, my LP has been suffering from severe headaches, often waking up in the early morning with pain. At first, I did not pay attention to it, thinking that it was just an ordinary headache, because there were various reasons for it. So she took some painkillers to relieve the headache. However, when this phenomenon occurred more often over time, and she felt that the headache was not an ordinary headache, she started to seek medical help.
The UK is known for its universal, publicly funded health care and has designed and established a whole health care system for it. The lowest level of health care is the clinic which is established in all the different communities, that is to say, there are community clinics in each area, and each resident is registered in the community clinic and has a regular community doctor, which is called GP doctor in this case. In terms of size, these clinics are similar to the health clinics of some larger units in China. If you have an urgent illness, such as a cold or fever, you can go directly to the clinic. If it is not a very urgent condition, you will need to make an appointment with your GP doctor, which will usually be within 3-7 days. For common illnesses, the GP doctor will check you out and prescribe some medicine, pick up the medicine is at an outside pharmacy and you will need to pay a small fee for the medicine, not much probably a few pounds each time. If you are an old patient and use medication regularly, you can pay a fixed fee, like my LP has high blood pressure and takes medication regularly, so deliver £9 per month, then all the medication prescribed here at the GP is included in the cost. If there is nothing more the GP can do for your condition, then he will refer the patient to a regional hospital. Each region has a larger general hospital that takes patients with larger conditions. At the beginning of April, my LP started to see the GP doctor. The doctor asked about her condition and learned that she had hypertension and had a history of taking medication, so she thought at that time that the headache was caused by hypertension and prescribed medication with better efficacy for hypertension. Later, we wondered if the headache was caused by the cervical spine, because a misalignment of the cervical spine can also cause severe headaches. However, it was not until June that we underwent an X-ray examination at a regional hospital with the consent of the GP, and it was later confirmed that there was no problem with the cervical spine. In the meantime, since one of our TCM friends is quite knowledgeable about osteopathic treatment in Chinese medicine, he drove long distances several times to seek help. However, after his osteopathic treatment, there was some effect at that time, but the headache remained afterwards. We also did several acupuncture treatments, but none of them could remove the disease. Thus, from the beginning of April until June, my LP visited Dr. GP several times, but to no avail.
Nearly 3 months after the onset of the disease, on June 29th, early in the morning around 5:00 am, my LP woke up with pain again, this time we went directly to the regional hospital and tried to see the hospital emergency room, but when we got there, the doctor on duty didn’t see you at all at that time, and informed the Reception staff of the hospital about the situation, and they gave us an internal hospital phone number to communicate directly with a doctor by phone. During the phone call, my LP told us about his illness, but the doctor still told us to wait until after work. At around 8.30am, the doctor came, asked about the situation, prescribed another painkiller and sent us home.
As this situation continued, my LP’s headache continued and showed signs of getting worse. At her insistence, in early July, the GP doctor finally agreed to recommend her to go to a regional hospital. To go to the regional hospital, we still needed to make an appointment with the GP, and soon the GP informed us of the appointment at the regional hospital, but unfortunately the appointment was already two weeks away. So from July onwards, my LP started to make appointments at the regional hospital to see different doctors. As each appointment required a waiting time of several to ten days, there was only a slow wait for diagnosis and medical treatment in the midst of the painful ordeal. During this time, LP’s condition continued to progress, the headaches worsened, and the vision in her eyes seemed to get worse and worse. The only realistic way to stop the headache symptoms was to take painkillers, and the dosage was increasing significantly, and the painkillers used were already only three together to barely stop the headache symptoms.
By mid to late August, after trying various treatments and diagnoses, he was finally seen by a brain surgeon. After some consultation, the brain surgeon agreed to do an MIR Scan, or MRI scan, on my LP. After another 20 days of waiting, the MRI scan was finally performed on the afternoon of September 12. There was still a wait for the MRI results to come back, and another appointment to see him was scheduled for October 27th.
However, on September 26, we received a letter from the hospital telling us that the MRI results showed an enlarged pituitary gland, which should be a pituitary tumor. We later learned that after the MRI results came out, the doctor at the regional hospital looked at them and was afraid to confirm the diagnosis, and sent the results to a major hospital in Oxford for help, where the doctor immediately confirmed that it was a pituitary tumor. A letter from the hospital also informed that further blood tests would be performed to further verify which type of pituitary tumor it belonged to. A vision test will also be performed, as the pituitary tumor is a complication of the disease that causes significant nerve compression and loss of vision.
On September 30, in accordance with the placement, a blood sample was taken and the results of further tests were awaited. At the same time a vision test was performed and the results were sent to the General Hospital along with it. At this point in time, we were already in great shock. It had been half a year from the appearance of symptoms to the diagnosis of the disease, and my LP was just spending her days in the torment of the disease. Of course, fortunately, this pituitary tumor is a benign tumor and is not life-threatening for the time being. But after all, it is a disease inside the brain and one has to be worried and anxious. Moreover, there are severe headache symptoms. Since the diagnosis of pituitary tumor was confirmed, we thought we should hurry up with the treatment, but the doctors at the hospital continued to be unhurried and progressive. We asked for an appointment to see the doctor in advance, but were told no because the brain surgeon was away on vacation for about 10 days.
During this time my LP reviewed a lot of information and learned a lot about the expertise in this area, as well as the treatment and current status of this condition. We know that the best way for this disease should be surgical removal, and the current surgical method is very advanced, without opening the skull, a hole is drilled from inside the nostril, an instrument directly reaches the lesion and then removes and sucks out the tumor, the success rate of the operation is over 90%, and this operation can be done in China. The results of the blood tests were not available until October 20. He was told that the prolactin level was super high, and the results showed that it was a prolactin-type pituitary tumor. In anxiety and helplessness, we finally waited until October 27th. The doctor from the brain surgery department of the regional hospital again examined my LP’s disease, and to our surprise, the doctor concluded that the disease was a lactogenic pituitary tumor and should be treated conservatively, which means that surgery was not needed and medication was the main treatment. The doctor also said that the patient’s current headache was not caused by the pituitary tumor. Finally, we were advised to see an endocrinologist, and he called the endocrinologist at that time to make an appointment to see him, but the appointment turned out to be almost two months later in mid-December.
Coming out of the hospital, a feeling of sadness and helplessness was heartbreaking. My LP, who currently takes painkillers to relieve her illness, takes three kinds of painkillers more than three or four times a day. My wife said, it seems that we can’t wait to see the hospital for treatment, and just taking painkillers will finish people off. When we got back, we called the endocrinologist, who is usually answered by a secretary. We told about the disease and the pain it caused and strongly requested to be seen and treated as soon as possible. The secretary lady was good and sympathetic to my LP’s condition and managed to adjust the appointment to November 20, about 20 days earlier than before, which was the limit, but even then there was still a month of waiting time. During this period, we did two things on our own. Since we had been diagnosed with a prolactinopituitary tumor, the special drug for this disease is bromocriptine, but this prescription drug is not available here. On November 1, we received the medicine in the mail and started to take it, but the side effects of this medicine were quite strong and there were some problems with the dosage, so the headache worsened after taking it.
The second thing was that we had no choice but to return to China for treatment. We have also contacted the doctor in Beijing directly on the phone, and they promised that they could reserve a bed and operate as soon as possible, as long as they said so in advance. We have also consulted and booked our airline tickets and are ready to issue them directly and fly back to Beijing once confirmed. Especially around November 15, we had already made up our mind to go back to China for treatment, only that day was a Sunday and the booking agency could not issue tickets at that time, so we did not go through with it. Some of our friends who knew about our situation discouraged us, and we were convinced by one of the more important reasons: while we could go back to China to have the surgery soon, what about the follow-up treatment and the corresponding series of problems if the surgery was not ideal? After all, the appointment time was almost up, so we had to hold on a little longer to see how the treatment would go. So, we temporarily stopped our plan to go back to China.
On November 20, we finally waited for the endocrinologist’s appointment, and we went there as scheduled. Before that, we had made careful preparations. Since there was a lot of professional knowledge and terminology involved, we were worried that our communication with the doctor would be obstructed, so we printed a letter in advance, telling the information and facts we knew about this, stating that it was a macroadenoma, and we also quoted a lot of information to show that the current headache was caused by the pituitary tumor, and strongly requested for surgery. According to my LP’s story, the endocrinologist at that time also still believed that surgical removal was not necessary and that medication would be sufficient. However, my LP argued with them about the pain caused by the disease and the fact that her eyesight was declining rapidly. The doctor seemed shaken and ordered a vision test right then and there. The results confirmed that in just over two months, my LP’s eyesight had significantly decreased again compared to the last time. After seeing this result, the doctor carefully questioned the condition of the disease, looked at the MRI photos, and also made an appointment to consult with several other doctors. The final conclusion was that the pituitary tumor was large and belonged to a macroadenoma, which caused headaches and impaired vision due to pressure on the nerves. The hospital doctor promised to contact the relevant hospital in Oxford immediately and that the patient would need to go to the Oxford hospital for further consultation and treatment. In the meantime, the endocrinologist prescribed my LP a medicine, not bromocriptine, but a newer special medicine, which apparently had no side effects and was supposed to be effective, and was taken for almost 50 days before the surgery, and the headache was later relieved. My LP even jokingly said that it was possible to do without the surgery. Indeed, the surgery on the head was a bit worrying.
Three days later, we received a letter from the hospital agreeing that we were to see the doctor at Churchill Hospital in Oxford on December 2. We waited for another week or so, and on December 2, we went to the endocrinology department of the hospital, where we had a consultation with a neurosurgeon to examine my LP, which lasted about 5 hours. Based on the MRI results from more than two months ago, the doctors here concluded that this was a large adenoma that had hemorrhaged inside the tumor, causing it to enlarge and compress the nervous system, resulting in severe headaches and vision loss. My LP asked if this was a medical condition known as sudden stroke, and the doctor replied in the affirmative. My LP questioned why the MRI scan report did not mention that sudden stroke is an emergency condition that can cause headache, vomiting, and even death in severe cases. The doctor said it was probably due to the limited level of doctors in the regional hospital who did not know much about this condition. The doctors in Oxford felt that the condition had to be surgically removed and that medication would not relieve the condition. According to their schedule, the surgery was scheduled for January 19, ’09. My goodness, we finally had a definite date for treatment, but even so, we still had to wait almost 50 days, which meant that we had to suffer for another 50 days.