A young mum says she has been tortured by the agonising wait for an ‘urgent’ follow-up appointment after a worrying brain scan reveal.
Katie Scullion from Ayr has been left in the dark over when she will be able to meet with a specialist to discuss ‘visible masses’ discovered on her brain following an MRI scan last June.
The mum-of-two, who had her second child in July, has faced an anxious wait to be diagnosed due to pressures of the Covid pandemic.
But despite being placed on the urgent list for a neurology appointment, Katie faces a gut-wrenching three-month wait to be seen.
It comes as nearly 10,000 patients have waited a year or more for NHS treatment in Ayrshire, including key diagnostic tests.
The figures, from Public Health Scotland, show that a total of 9,346 people in the Ayrshire and Arran area faced extensive waits to treat their ailments, as of September 30 last year.
Katie, 22, was pregnant with her six-month-old daughter when she was first rushed into hospital after suffering from stroke symptoms.
Her speech had slurred to the point she couldn’t string a sentence together and she was suffering from painful headaches and nausea when she was carted up to Ayr Hospital.
Fearing the young mum-to-be was suffering from a stroke, medics whisked her into an MRI scanner to check there were no bleeds or clots in her brain.
But instead of finding what they initially feared, doctors discovered masses towards the middle of her brain.
Katie was then sent home and told she would be referred to a specialist at NHS Ayrshire & Arran neurology department.
But more than six months on, she still has no answers and suffers from her original symptoms every day – leaving her too ill to work and struggling to find the energy to look after her two children.
Katie told Ayrshire Live: “When I was eight months pregnant with my daughter, I went for a brain scan. I was sent up as a maternity inpatient where they tried to manage my symptoms and sent me for a scan to check for any bleeds or clots.
“It was a relief to be told there was none but then the doctor who gave me my results said, ‘we have found something’. They couldn’t tell me what it was, just that I had to be referred onto neurology.
“All I was told was they found ‘visible masses’ in my brain, they said it could be multiple sclerosis but they just don’t know.
“I was sent home, they told me someone would be in touch but months passed and nothing happened. I’ve lost count how many times I called them.
“I last spoke to them in October and I’ve been waiting for a phone call back ever since.”
Katie has told how the wait for her appointment has severely impacted her mental health – with the young mum enduring sleepless nights as she fears she has an undiagnosed brain tumour.
“Until they completely rule something out I am only going to worry more about it," she said. “The point in this appointment is to diagnose me so I know what I am dealing with. I’m scared for myself and for my kids.
“If it is a brain tumour, it's right in the middle of the brain. There might not be anything they can do to treat it and my worry is if it’s taking so long since my first scan, will I need to be scanned again and go through all this again?”
Katie says she feels abandoned by the health service but praised her GP who intervened and demanded she was upgraded to be urgently seen.
However, she was left stunned to find that an urgent appointment still carries a three-month wait and she is worried that other people in her position are left waiting in pain.
She added: “It’s like they are playing with people’s lives because of Covid.
“I get that Covid is serious and stuff but the way things are going there are going to be a lot more deaths from cancers and other serious things because people can’t get their appointments.”
Katie added: “I really feel down about it, I’ve struggled to maintain friendships because no one can understand there is actually something wrong with me.
“My speech is still slurred at times, I want to get a job at some point but I need to know what this is first before making a commitment. It has put everything on hold.”
Dr Crawford McGuffie, medical director at NHS Ayrshire & Arran, said: "Due to patient confidentiality reasons, we are unable to comment on individual patient cases.
"We would encourage the patient to contact us direct for further discussion."
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