"My child & the lack of service provided"

My child had an ingrown toenail, which they had before on the exact same toe 9 years prior. We saw their Dr who provided them with antibiotics. however, the antibiotics didn't work & it continued to worsen. We couldn't get back into the Dr & after a few weeks went by & my child was struggling to walk I took them to the ED Department in Albany.

The Dr we saw looked at it & said they couldn't do anything for it as it had developed hypergranulation tissue on one side. It was very red & angry & they gave us more antibiotics. The Nurses tried to wrap & compress the toe to hopefully bring down the inflammed tissue & sent us on our way. We were told to soak the toe in salt water & re-compress the toe every 2 days. I asked them to refer my child to the Hospital Podiatrist & they said we would need to see our Dr or a Podiatrist in town. After another week of the second lot of antibiotics not working & my child developing more pain & tissue growing even more. I booked into whatever Dr I could get into. We were sent away with a third lot of antibiotics.

Over the week it continued to get worse, the antibiotics didn't work & my child started to develop numbness in their toe & was really struggling to walk. We then went up to the GP after hours clinic which after telling my child's journey to them they were reluctant to provide more antibiotics, they swabbed it & wrapped it up again. I asked them about the Podiatrist I had been recommended by a friend up at the Hospital. They told us they were more of a Geriatric Podiatrist & my child didn't really fit the criteria.

After leaving there frustrated with nothing being done for my child again I decided to reach out to the Podiatrist myself. He was amazing, not only did he call back after hours (on the same day) but he listened fully to what my son had been through, came up with a plan & wrote a referral straight away for us & managed to squeeze him in that week. Even though we had been soaking & re-dressing the toe every two days it simply had not got any better & looked worse.

The Podiatrist (Tep) took one look at it & the plan we had come up with went out the window & he decided it was so bad the whole nail needed to come off & once it grows back he would cut the side of the nail for my child. We were in & out within an hour, sent off with a care plan, antibiotics (different to the last 3 lots), a Dr's certificate, a follow up appointment booked & enough supplies to get him through for 2 weeks until we see him again. He was one of the most through Specialists I have even met, amazing bed side manner & explained every single thing he was doing & why.  Turns out it seems my child should have been referred on that visit to the ED as it's not all Geriatric patients he deals with & there are appointments made for the general public.