"Missed pericarditis and an incorrect prescription"

I went to hospital after having spikes in heart rate after a bad infection. I went to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh A&E in November of 2024. My blood pressure was very high, I described my symptoms, in the back of my mind I knew there was something wrong and suspected pericarditis but I was discharged barely able to walk as the heart rate was put down to my drinking and one-off drug use. I acted stupidly but I feel being able to ascribe it to these causes meant I was discharged without this being spotted. When looking back I should have asked about it but felt embarrassed and trusted the doctors.

I gradually got worse until I was taken by ambulance to the Western General over Christmas with crushing pain in my left and barely being able to breathe, a heart racing so fast I thought I was having a heart attack. I was given colchicine and ibuprofen. It worked to slightly ease the pain and heart rate and so it was decided I had pericarditis. I was told I would be booked in for an echocardiogram and a letter would be sent out about this and to take the colchicine and 1800mg ibuprofen per day for three months. There was no mention that I should taper off of ibuprofen when I picked up my prescription in the hospital. I'm sensitive to ibuprofen and rarely take it because I had HSP as a child and in my early twenties. After two months at this dose I kept fainting and had swollen up like the Michelin man.

I phoned the Western General and they said to come down. They had no record that I was supposed to get an echo. Only after I told the nurse my dose did they look at me quizzically and says that I was supposed to have tapered off it, I was flabbergasted. A couple of days after stopping the ibuprofen the lightheadedness and swollen diaphragm seemed to ease. I now have been prescribed candesartan and dapaglaflozin for proteinuria. I'm certain this level of ibuprofen put undue pressure on my kidneys and exacerbated their bad condition.

I was promised treatment, the echo, which I only finally had around April 2025, by which time all trace of pericarditis had gone, so I never really had a definitive clinical diagnosis (just one based on the fact that colchicine worked).

I wasn't given the correct instructions for my prescription (there was also no mention of tapering off on the prescription label, nor was I told this in any way until I ended up back in the hospital). These errors caused stress, uncertainty and undue pain when I was supposed to be getting better and could have been easily avoided. When I was in hospital, the nurses, ambulance staff and doctors were (apart from these errors) incredible.

My advice would be to 1) make sure drink/drug use isn't used to preclude or cause bias against other diagnoses 2) to make sure in a formal way that prescriptions are prescribed correctly and that patients understand if there are any planned changes to their medication (in person and on the prescription label) and 3) planned testing is noted, booked and not just "lost in the system", I had to fight for months after to get my echo and it should have happened soon after my pericarditis diagnosis, it was ridiculous, informal and slapdash.