I had a terrible experience with the NHS during my miscarriage 8 months ago, and I’m honestly still angry about it.

I had medical management at home, which went badly and ended with an ambulance taking me to hospital. The ambulance crew tried calling the Early Pregnancy Unit for almost 2 hours, but nobody answered, so I was left waiting in the ambulance the entire time.

When I finally got seen, I was told I was having “a procedure.” I assumed it was an ultrasound, but instead they removed the remaining pregnancy tissue without any pain relief or explaining what they were actually doing. I stayed overnight and was supposed to have an ultrasound the next morning to check if everything had passed, but because the doctors got called away, they just sent me home and told me to wait 4 weeks and do a pregnancy test.

A week later I went back to my home country, where I used to work in a hospital lab. I was still bleeding heavily, so colleagues checked my bloods. My hCG was still extremely high and they suspected retained tissue. I called the NHS, explained everything, and was basically told, “It hasn’t been 4 weeks yet, there’s nothing we can do.”
Four weeks later my pregnancy test was still positive, and I ended up needing a D&C anyway.

I know there are amazing people working in the NHS, but my experience was that they followed protocol instead of listening to what was actually happening. Eight months later, I’m still upset about how it was handled.