Not going for the lols, just trying to be useful.
In 2009 I was reacquainted with my vomit.

For a good 2 years or so before then, I'd not seen a peep of the stuff. Then suddenly, bucketloads of the stuff. Red-coloured from some cherries, thick vomit, thin vomit, food-full vomit, the green vile stuff you get when you run out of food to give up. I'm an equal opportunities vomiter. Vomit while in pain, vomit to relieve pain, vomiting with jaundice... woo.

My cute NHS anecdote regarding vomiting was when I was staying over at the other half's place (before we were living together) and he decided "enough was enough" and called the GP surgery for me, only to be given a rather grumpy receptionist who had heard student after student claim an "emergency" when they had a drippy nose.
"Can we have an appointment today please? She's been up all night in pain and vomiting."
"Oh really?'
"Yes, look, we know it's gallstones but can we do *something*?"
"er... we can refer you to the nurs..."
At which point I started vomiting at the other end of the room rather audibly. Woman apparently then sounded a little shocked at the idea of someone actually being ill.
"Can you get here in an hour's time to see the duty doctor?"

Anyway, I picked up a reasonable amount about the NHS in my journey to remove my gall bladder. It only seems fair to pass it on. Everyone I encountered was awesome really, and I thank them lots for their help, sympathy, understanding and excellent treatment.

Tips:

1. Own a white or light coloured bucket. NHS people *always* ask if there are "coffee grounds" or suchlike in your vomit. They're asking if there's blood, basically. I've always had to answer "look, it's a red/blue bucket, it ALL looks brown and black." This annoys people on the end of the phone who want you to fit down their little diagnosis pathtree-thing, and hinders your chance of getting some magic drugs that make the vomiting stuff stop.

2. If you're feeling unwell, and aren't articulate enough to turn the forecoming yellow liquid dance event into some lol-spinning qotw entry, always keep the bucket in the bathroom when you need to use the toilet.

3. If you get seriously ill and are 25 or under, do it in Cardiff - I had a particularly bad gallstone attack while at a mate's and got a ton of stuff to help that would have cost me almost £30 normally.If over 25, there's still benefits: they also appear to have an excellent out-of-hours service. I actually saw a doctor at 9am on a Sunday, rather than the nurse in Reading's out of hours thing on a Bank Holiday who hugged me and gave me LULZ-painkillers without asking about existing medication.

4. Learn to wee on demand: People seem to constantly want urine samples when you're unwell, and expect you to just be able to do so within a few minutes. I had some nurse come in the bathroom in my GP surgery thinking I'd collapsed because it was taking me 30mins to wee.

5. Anti-vomiting medication has some hefty side effects, but it's fantastic if you can get it to work. If your GP offers suppositories for pain relief, politely decline as they'll be useless if your arse decides to join in on the body-fuckery. You want the ones that sit on the gum ^_^

6. If you don't drink tea and you're in hospital, expect some very very strange looks. Nurses get confused, and don't know what else to offer you. Hospitals run on tea. I've had a particular instance where I was refused more water but was offered tea instead. At 3 in the morning. I swear they put it in my IV.

7. Call up the people who do the choose and book, get their data on you: 95% of the time this should be fine, but an incorrect address can accidentally add on a few months to an operation or consultation date.

8. Your "outpatient" and "inpatient" records are on two separate sets of offices and computer systems. Expect to have to repeat and summarise the last 10 years of your medical life to pretty much *everyone* who sees you. Have it on paper, including medications and the history of what you were taking when.

9. If you're in a considerable amount of distress, some easy way of marking time that doesn't involve the clock is a good management tactic. DVD boxsets worked well for me, that is until the attacks started happening in clusters. But until then, find something.

10. Once you've vomited enough in a few months, *nothing* will gross you out. This is the perfect time to consider having a baby, as they're generally shit and vomit machines.

I'll add some more once I've had some dinner...
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Thu 7 Jan 2010, 22:26, 1 reply)

Sounds counter-intuitive this one but...
Your out-of-hours GP service (or if during the day, your normal GP service) is much better resourced to deal with vomiting than A&E: the emergency peeps will make sure you're not *actually* dying, then leave you to it. Your GP can prescribe stuff to help you, and accelerate further scans/etc for you.
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Fri 8 Jan 2010, 2:32, closed)