"One night stay due to leg pain"

I was taken to Box Hill ED by ambulance recently due to severe sciatica (right butt pain radiating down the back of the right leg) from herniated discs. As expected, there were other patients in line, and I waited for about two hours before being moved into the tent until a bed became available in the ER.

I would like to acknowledge how professional and attentive the paramedics were until they handed me over to the nurses at the tent.

Because of pain I was given Endone (one of the stronger painkillers) combined with Neurofen. Naturally the pain subsided and became more manageable. It seems things went south from here. I recall I was lied to about MRI - one staff said that it was down, and the other said that it was unavailable after hours. I later learned that neither was true.

I believe the Emergency Department would only go ahead with MRI if my condition was life-threatening or as serious as needing immediate surgery. Next, they continued to give me Endone/Neurofen every 4 hours. This would of course mask the pain so much so that I was able to walk with much less pain than before I was taken to the hospital. Guess what - as soon as the doctor saw me walking, they asked me if I could do the same at home, to which I reply I could with severe pain, and that was the end as far as assessment was concerned.

It seems like for them, protocol is more important than how much pain you are in. I was discharged the following morning, preceded by a visit by physio who seemed utterly clueless to me. None of the doctors shared with me, in detail, what my CT scan revealed, and I left scratching my head wondering why I had spent the last 20 hours there.

The only believable truth I heard while I was there, was the explanation offered by one of the doctors who said finding out the exact cause of my condition is not within the scope of the ED. Fair enough. But in my opinion, if you're a trained medical professional, at least you ought to know not to aggravate the sciatic pain by telling the patient to push and pull hard with the affected leg. This led to a major flare up of the sciatic nerve and the nurse ended up giving me a muscle relaxant in addition to a dose of Endone, neither of which helped.

I understand that ED is not a place where specialists are available to monitor patients like me, but I would at least expect people who are more qualified than me to offer me an informed view of my condition.

I feel that if you can't interpret CT results, then do MRI and get one of the radiologists to give you a proper read. Now I'm back home at the time of writing this, with level 9-10 pain, not being able to do anything about it.