A mum-of-two who fell down the stairs at home claims her "horrific" experience in A&E left her in tears and deeply traumatised. Laura Ann Jones-Ridgway, who has the tissue disorder Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), needed an ambulance after falling backwards down the stairs, blacking out, and being unable to move the right side of her body on Sunday, October 9.
However as she was allegedly classed as an "amber" call operators at the Welsh Ambulance Service warned her that it would take a long time for paramedics to reach her. As a result Laura said she waited 25 hours for a crew to arrive at her home in Aberdare, Cynon Valley, by which time she was "screaming in agony" at her "misshapen" right kneecap.
But worse was to follow when the 51-year-old arrived at Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil where she spent 10 hours in the back of an ambulance due to a lack of beds in A&E followed by a day in the emergency department on a trolley. She claims that she ended up spilling a full bedpan across her bed as she was given no help to go to the toilet and was forced to remain in her urine-soaked pyjamas for the rest of her nightmare stay.
