Peptic Ulcers and Irish/NZ hospital treatment difference

Rabies

For the past 10yrs I've suffered with stomach pains. When it gets real bad I was able to feel the pain around my back. There was times when I was only getting a few hours sleep a night for days on end. Other times I was fine for weeks or months.

When I lived in Ireland I had and endoscopy done was told I was negative for H. pylori in my stomach. Given some tablets and sent on my merry way. Pain would reoccur, same story. Take tablets, there is nothing wrong.

The first time i seen a doctor about this was in 1999. Last time I seen a doctor in Ireland was 2004.

Fast forward to 2006, I moved to NZ and still had pains, but I usually ignored them and treated them as every day life. Lack of sleep and drained for days on end wasn't good but I put up with it.

Nov 2008 was a bad month for me. Bad pains nearly everyday. Still didn't see a Doc (ya I know i should have). Then it all was fine. The end of the first week of Dec I collapse in work. I was out cold for a few min.

Get sent to hospital, pass out twice more in front of doctors. Docs do blood tests, x-rays and have me under strict watch.

They expected me to have a stomach ulcer that burst. Told them I was checked before but results were fine. They still do another endoscopy. Biopsy results are negative again, and no image of an ulcer was found.

Spent a few days in hospital, I'd lost a lot of blood. Needed blood transfusion.

They booked me in for a colonoscopy, that also returned nothing (but they expected that).

Next step was getting a Pill Cam to check out my small intestine. Images beamed back found an ulcer.

Back to hosptial with a two days of the results, another endoscopy done, this time into my small intestine. Apparently I have quite a bit of scarring from previous ulcers and that area of my small intestine is a little out of shape because of it. They treated me for H. pylori again, just incase. I was on LOSEC Hp7 OAC for a week. This was kill the H. pylori if it was there and to cut back my stomach acid and see if the ulcer heals.

In 3 weeks time I've to get a blood test for Zollinger-Ellison Syndrome, supposedly its rare, but because of the shape my small intestine was in the doctors want to make sure.

Well, where am I going with this? Basically, I seen my Irish doctor countless times about my pain, even after I had the endoscopy done. Nothing more was done.

Here in NZ, the doctors kept on looking until they found what was wrong. Granted, it went a stage further and caused me to pass out a few times and blood loss. But they were still very detailed with checks.

Furthermore, my endoscopy experience in Ireland was terrible. I've had it done twice here and it was fine.

At the end of the day I'm finally happy that I know what was causing me pain for 10yrs and its getting sorted. Go NZ health care!!!!

tallaght01

When I worked in NZ, most of the docs were Irish.

But, in fairness, collapsing and needing a transfusion gets you a hell of a lot more investigations than having intermittent abdo pain.

Every doc in Ireland an NZ knows that intermittent abdo pain can be caused by ulcers. But there isn't the resources to investigate everyone so thoroughly.

NZ healthcare was in most ways much better than Irish healthcare, as they treat their staff much better, and there's less waiting about for stuff.

But, having said that, the standard of nurse and docs is pretty much the same in NZ as in Ireland in my opinion.

Rabies

I do agree that my case became worse and they did investigate more because of that. I was really impressed with speed of which my test were done and the standard of the health care. Big ups to the staff, they were all amazing.

When I was in Ireland and trying to tell my doctors that at times I'm buckled over in pain and can't stand straight at times wasn't getting me much attention. My fault for not pushing it harder. Only seen two different doctors and one consultant.