Disclaimer: This post about York Hospital is not an attack on individual clinicians or institutions. I am disclosing serious systemic neglect that I have expereinced in the public interest as part of my campaign to push for patient safety reform.

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Summary

York Hospital is the last hospital I attended. I was a patient there from 2022 to 2023. York Hospital identified clear abnormalities regarding my facial pain condition via MRI scanning, but they took no action. They disregarded the clinical findings and neglected to provide me with an explanation. Furthermore, they shifted the responsibility to South Tees, who also failed to take any action.

As a way of not having to deal with the findings, a clinician at York Hospital gaslighted me in a way I have never experienced before. This experience has made it impossible for me to attend any further medical appointments since. This is what happened:

Ear, Nose and Throat

I saw an ENT consultant in June 2022. Like all of his preceding colleagues, he promised to help me. He consented to perform an MRI and a CT scan, intending to compare them with the scans conducted by NHS Lothian. The consultant committed to investigating the root cause of my facial pain. He stated in his clinic letter that he was determined to ‘get to the bottom of this.’ I felt hopeful and optimistic.

Deflection of Responsibility

I had an MRI neck scan and a CT neck scan in July 2022. Two weeks after I had the scans, this ENT consultant wrote to me to tell me that they had found an abnormality in my retromolar area and buccal fat pad region. I felt helpless and devastated when I read his letter. He told me that he had sent the case up to South Tees instead of dealing with it internally.

The ENT consultant said that oral maxillofacial surgery needed to deal with the abnormality, not ENT, and because oral maxillofacial surgery at York Hospital had rejected my GP’s referral in 2022, he had transferred the case up to the max fax team in Middlesbrough.

He met his match with the consultant at James Cook Hospital, who sent the case back to him. South Tees told York Hospital that they found the abnormality, so the ‘ball was in their court’. The two hospitals sent my case back and forth for months but neither of these hospitals took responsibility for the problem. I felt like a tennis ball that had been batted off pitch.

My Head Pain

What was so difficult about this situation was that my left-sided head pain was worsening. It feels, and it still feels, like someone is screwing a corkscrew into the top of my head. My ear pain was also becoming more acute with this feeling of fullness in my left ear that I have. I asked the ENT consultant about my head pain. He said he thought it was an enlarged temporal bone causing the pain. The consultant said he would investigate it, but he didn’t. He discharged me from his care and gave me no answers or treatment options for the pain.

Ophthalmology

My experience with the ophthalmology clinic at York Hospital was equally as dismal. They too ignored clinical findings and declined to help me. I had been to the ophthalmology clinic at York Hospital about my periocular pain in 2014. This was after the ophthalmologist at Leeds Teaching Hospital kicked me off the ward and stopped my medication. The ophthalmology department at York Hospital also dismissed me back in 2014.

I attended ophthalmology at York Hospital in 2022 and I asked the ophthalmologist about the radiology images from the MRI scan that ENT did. I asked him about my small left eye and the swelling that I could see at the left side of my head. Additionally, I asked him if my pain and the visible swelling could be temporal arteritis. He said it wasn’t. He told me that what I was seeing was ‘just the angle of the scan’. Really?

 

 

“Treatment Nil.”

Then he really upset me. When I asked him to explain what the cause of my periorbital pain was. He said, ‘The issue is with the tissue.’ His comment exposed that he knew that my medical problem is a soft tissue problem, but he did nothing about it. “Treatment nil,” he wrote in his clinic letter.

He did acknowledge that the abnormality that ENT had found on the MRI scan needed following up. He wrote to oral maxillofacial surgery and asked them to see me. But his defensiveness and unwillingness to address my periorbital pain were, I think, an act of protection. He knew I saw his colleague back in 2014, and he did not want to acknowledge that I had a medical issue with my left eye because to do so would have exposed his colleague’s medical negligence.

Oral Maxillofacial Surgery

What took place with oral maxillofacial surgery at York Hospital was utterly horrific. The trauma I experienced with this department has prohibited me from being able to attend any further medical appointments for my facial pain.

In 2022, the oral and maxillofacial surgery department rejected my general practitioner’s referral, stating that the case was “too complex.” But after ophthalmology referred me once more, they agreed to see me. In February 2023, I had an appointment with an oral maxillofacial surgeon at York Hospital.

I asked him to explain what this abnormality was that they found, but he refused to give me an explanation. He moved on from the question and gave me no answers.

A Patient Safety Incident

I then showed him some of the radiology images from that MRI scan. I told him that where the white is, is where I have the pain. He gaslighted me and tried to make out I was seeing things. ‘It’s just a coincidence that you’re seeing that. You’re choosing to see it,’ he said.

Photoshopping My Images

I then showed him one of the radiology images where there is white all around my left eye and down to my jaw. I told him that the associated pain I experience is located here. He told me that the image was simply the “angle of the scan” and was therefore “inaccurate.”

After this, the situation became sinister. He displayed this picture on his computer and applied photoshopping to make all of the white show up on my right side. ‘Look, Felicia,’ he said. ’I can make it come up on the other side.’ It was like sitting next to the magician, Paul Daniels.

I lastly showed him some of the CT radiology images from NHS Lothian. I asked him to explain the visible asymmetry in my face, to which he replied, ‘The quality of your I-pad is shit.’ It was difficult to believe what I was hearing. You just don’t expect this kind of conduct from clinicians. Even the nurse looked shocked.

The following is what made this type of gaslighting so horrible: gaslighting is bad at any time. It’s awful when medical professionals minimise a patient’s symptoms and claim they’re all in your head. But when they have clinical evidence in front of them that there is something wrong and continue to tell you that you are imagining it and manipulate that data, it’s profoundly sinister.

Why Did They Do It?

I’ve said on this blog and in my social media video campaign that my story is a dirty institutional cover-up that involves two local authorities, 19 NHS trusts, and a general practitioner’s office.

If York Hospital had acted on the abnormality that they found in 2022, it would have exposed, in their view, failings at previous trusts. The hospitals that would have been most sorely implicated are Leeds Teaching Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’, The North Manchester General, The Manchester Royal Infirmary, Charing Cross Hospital, NHS Fife and NHS Lothian. It was easier, therefore, to gaslight me and deflect responsibility. That’s why I think they did it.

Impact on Me

I was in a seriously bad way after this consultation with profound trauma.  I suffered extreme insomnia for months, and I was woken up in the middle of the night with flashbacks of that consultation. Following this gaslighting incident, I decided that I was not going to attend any more medical appointments because the risk to my mental health was way too severe. I cancelled all follow-ups with York Hospital and have not seen any clinicians about my facial pain since this incident.

Questions For York Hospital

My campaign video below asks York Hospital many questions about my condition and about the associated radiology images. The most important question is what was the abnormality that they found on the MRI scan. The other questions I ask York Hospital are:

a) whether my soft tissue is now completely calcified and whether my pterygoid muscle is now damaged on the left side. The radiology report states the abnormality has extended there and something doesn’t look right in these images.

b) what is the swelling and pain next to my left eye if it isn’t temporal arteritis?

c) whether the visible enlargement above my left frontal lobe is indicative of neuroinflammation.

d) I also ask questions about the visible white patches on my left lung and whether these could be an associated infection.

In spite of asking York Hospital these questions on X, (formerely Twitter) they have not replied to my questions.

Conclusion

What took place at York Hospital – the gaslighting, the deflection and the delays – was appalling. When you know a patient is in this much pain and has been suffering for this long, then you should act on any abnormal findings immediately. They chose not to. This has caused me immense suffering and is a miscarriage of justice. It also violates many of the principles set out in Good Medical Practice, particularly those concerning doctors’ obligation to answer questions honestly and provide patients with the information they want and need in a way they can understand.

My experience at York Hospital was a serious patient safety incident that raises questions about the urgent necessity to make patient safety a reality in hospitals. It is currently merely a politically correct slogan that politicians use when it is convenient. However, my experience at York shows that the reality for many patients is a long way away from the patient being safe and cared for. Ignoring an abnormal scan is not patient safety. It is patient danger.

My pain is being prolonged, and diagnostic clarity is being delayed. Accurate diagnosis is a critical component in patient safety.

I strongly feel that York Hospital’s behaviour and actions are complicit in and colluding with a long-running cover-up that has lasted for twelve years. They took no action. They ignored the abnormal clinical findings because to name it-to diagnose and intervene would have meant acknowledging the harm not just within their walls, but across the entire network of NHS trusts. So they chose neutrality and deflection.

But neutrality in the face of harm is not care. It’s complicity. I would never be able to walk through the doors of York Hospital again after this experience. Never.

Video 9: Advocacy Video Campaign

Photo Credits: Ksenia Chernaya, Karolina Grabowska and RDNE Project on Pexels. Click-free-vector-images on Pixabay. Buddha Elemental, Ira Pavlyakovich and Hermes Rivera on Unsplash.