He left the ED after waiting five hours. The next day he needed emergency surgery

Becki Moss shares her harrowing story of two days in and out of Auckland ED, where an ovarian cyst landed her after emergency surgery.

A woman who left Auckland Hospital’s emergency department after waiting for five hours in excruciating pain was suffering from uterine contractions, and the next day she was rushed to the hospital by ambulance for emergency surgery. Becki Moss, 27, woke up Tuesday morning with pain in her lower back that she says was so bad she almost threw up. I just went from being normal to being in so much pain that I couldn’t do anything.”

Moss has suffered from kidney disease since she was eight and endometriosis since she was 15, but says she has never experienced this. “I’m used to feeling pain, but this was like a new phase.” Being at high risk for serious illness from Covid-19 and having a history of injuries in hospitals, Moss spent the day trying to manage the pain on his own with an ever-increasing dose of painkillers. By 10pm, it was too much to bear.

“When I got to the hospital I had paracetamol, ibuprofen, codeine, and Tramadol,” says Moss. Nothing helped – he was barely able to walk when a friend brought him to the busy ED at Auckland Hospital. Moss was seen by a nurse, who told her about the pain medication she was taking, and that she also had kidney problems. “I told him ‘this is very painful. It’s not normal for me.’

Moss says the nurse didn’t ask many questions about the pain she was experiencing, and she felt “stopped” by the initial conversation despite her depression. “I was lying on plastic chairs, wrapped in a hot water bottle.” He stayed like that for the next two hours at least, until the same nurse called him. There, he says, the nurse mistakenly insisted that Moss had chronic pain, and that he was taking painkillers every day.

“I had to say ‘no, I don’t take any pain medication every day, this is different, this is new. There is something wrong here with my ovaries or my intestines.'” She was sent back to the ED waiting room for another two hours, when a patient without a mask arrived with cold and flu symptoms. “So he’s walking around in little places coughing, and I’m at high risk for Covid-19 so it was scary,” says Moss.

After waiting for hours, Moss was now on his knees, in tears, because he couldn’t stand up. The friend went back to the reception to ask how long it would take. A nurse came over to explain, and showed Moss her patient notes that read, in large letters, “patient appears comfortable” at the top of the page. “I was shocked,” Moss said. “How can someone look at me and say that I look good?”

“Even though I did first aid training, they always tell us that the people who feel the most pain are not the ones who scream – it’s the ones who stay silent. Because when you feel a lot of pain, you can’t scream, you can’t make a sound.”

By this time it was 2:30am on Wednesday morning, and Moss said he had to go to get his health back. I knew that the word ‘looks comfortable’ was the first thing on my notes, every doctor would see that. And everything can be messed with that,” she said. The friend drove her home and she took “two sleeping pills and every painkiller I had” to help her sleep through the night.

The next morning, he was still in pain. “I was talking to my mom on the phone and she said ‘you need to go to the hospital, you need to get an ambulance or something, this is not good.’ Moss called 111 and an ambulance took him back to the hospital, where a doctor immediately sent him to be evaluated. Hhe told her she had what looked like an ovarian cyst – where the ovary becomes twisted and bleeds – and that she needed surgery as soon as possible.

After a few more delays and some confusion over whether or not she needed an internal ultrasound, Moss was sent to the ward, taken off pain medication, and made no oral mistakes. “I didn’t know what was going on,” he recalls. “I was just told that I need surgery today. And now nothing is happening. And I’m scared. Sometimes you’re told you need to have an operation or have your ovaries removed and then nobody does anything.”

“If you let ovarian cysts continue, they will bleed,” she continues. “Then they fear that there is dead tissue, which can cause infections like peritonitis or sepsis in your body.” It was confirmed that she had a stomach abscess and a bleeding cyst, and at 10pm on Wednesday she was told she would have the next available operation. At around 2am, she went in for surgery to remove the tumor and remove her ovary.

When asked about Moss’ experience, Barry Snow, chief medical officer at Te Whatu Ora in Te Toka Tumai, said all patient concerns were taken very seriously. “We are sorry to hear about the problems Becki experienced during her time in our emergency department,” he said. “We encourage Becki to contact us directly about what happened to her so we can look into what happened and help answer any questions she may have.”

Snow also said that Te Whatu Ora prioritizes ED patients based on medical needs, which means there can be waiting times. “All patients are first evaluated when they come to the ED to determine their medical needs, and they will be reevaluated if their condition changes,” he said. “While we agree that long waits are not ideal for patients and their illnesses, we encourage patients to wait until they are seen by a doctor, whether it’s in the ED or the emergency room.”

If patients have concerns about their care they are encouraged to contact Te Whatu Ora directly or, if they prefer, speak to the Health and Disability Commissioner for an independent review.

Speaking to The Spinoff while recovering the day after surgery, Moss says everything that happened in the ED has left her feeling scared and angry. “Even though it was scary, I’m also more fortunate than most – I’m a person who fits the recommended BMI for doctors. I’m white. I have a university education,” she says. .”

This is also far from the first time Moss has had problems with medical professionals. When he had chronic kidney disease and was in severe pain between the ages of eight and 10, doctors told his mother to take him to a psychiatrist. When she was 15, she says a male doctor pulled down her pants and underwear without asking her permission. For years, she was told her endometriosis did not exist.

Moss believes she wasn’t taken seriously at the ED because she’s a woman who looks young for her age — she’s 27, but people still think she’s in high school, she says. “Many times in the past, doctors would talk to my girlfriends instead of telling me about my body,” she explains. “Men seem to call out men in the room and act like I don’t know what I’m talking about, or my body, which I don’t know.”

Given his medical background and his four years in the medical sciences, Moss also says there is a “tough line” to walk when explaining symptoms and disclosing information to doctors. “If you seem to know too much, then you feel like you’ve been put in a hypochondriac, drug-seeking state. You have to act dumb enough to be taken seriously. Because if you know too much, then it’s a problem.

Moss says he’s speaking out because he’s read many of the same stories – last week it was revealed A woman died of a heart attack after being sent home from the ED in Palmerston North, after presenting with chest pain. “I’ve been shut down by doctors, mostly men, before, but this was the next step,” she says. “I get really upset when I read some stories about how people are sent home with pain, and then it gets worse.

“I think people don’t believe that this can happen,” he adds. “But if we keep doing what we’ve always done, then we lessen the pain of the people around us.”