Frustrated after a seven-month wait for an operation, a grandmother mixed cranberry juice with crumbled biscuits to simulate her own blood and dialled 999 for an ambulance, reports The Times, London.
'After claiming to have been vomiting blood, Trizka Litton, 62, was taken to Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry. The mother of three got rid of her fake blood, which she was carrying in a plastic container, before it could be tested and underwent surgery to remedy a serious hiatus hernia,' the paper said.
"I carried a heavy burden of guilt and shame at being forced to cheat and lie," Mrs Litton said. "But that vanished when doctors told me just how near death I had been," the paper quoted her as saying.
After experiencing agonising pains and vomiting blood three years ago, Litton was diagnosed as suffering from a hiatus hernia. But despite being given medication to control the symptoms, her condition worsened, and in July 2001 she was taken by ambulance to Walsgrave Hospital after coughing up large amounts of blood.
A consultant surgeon at Warwick Hospital said she had a serious condition that required open surgery. Her stomach had been pushed up into her chest cavity and was pressing on her heart and lungs. She was then referred to another specialist consultant at Walsgrave, who placed her on a waiting list.
"In the meantime my condition continued to deteriorate even more. I started to bring up blood again and had to give up work completely." Three cancelled admissions in as many weeks finally drove Mrs Litton to the brink in November last year.
"What I did was completely out of character. I still don't know what came over me or how I could have even thought of cooking up such a preposterous plot," she said. Having been told that she should call an ambulance if she started to cough up blood again, she drove to a supermarket and bought the cranberry juice and biscuits. She had got the idea for the recipe from the sight of her own blood, which she said resembled the dark red juice, the Times said.
After grinding up the biscuits and mixing it with the juice, she poured the mixture in a into a plastic dish before dialling 999 for an ambulance. "When I arrived at the casualty department, I felt even more embarrassed by my duplicity," she said. "...I was eventually taken on to a ward at 4pm the following day, November 12. I even astonished myself by not blushing at my deceit when the surgeon came to see me." Her surgery, 17 hours after her arrival at the hospital, " was far more complicated than the surgeon had expected", she said.
But "Now I am feeling better I have decided to come clean and tell my story because I think it is dreadfully sad when decent, law-abiding people like me are driven to such desperate measures to get treatment. Had I not been underhand, I might be dead by now."
"It is not about beds but prioritising people's needs. It would be inappropriate for us to comment on what she did to get herself admitted, but if a patient tells us that they have been coughing up blood our responsibility is to take that seriously and act on it. We can't distrust every patient that comes in," a spokeswoman for the hospital said.