I need to visit A&E again for another x-ray of my ankle - previous experience was horrible

OK.

Can you just stop replying? This is not a post for you to push your beliefs of he NHS. 

I am.

I am suggesting that you utilise the vast availability of information to manage your own health.

Rather than relying entirely on "professionals" who do NOT have your interests & health as their main priority, and treat you like a serf, when you are ushered into their august prescences. 

I know, I know, it's a lot to take in. But it can be done.

All my friends who tell me to rush to a doctor every time I get a sniffle or a new ache, practically rattle when they walk from all the drugs they consume, and then after a while display the side effects which instead of reading the bloody bottle, (or your own copy of MIMS or the BNF) and realising what's happening to them, they return to the quack for yet more "treatment". 

You pay n to the NHS, via your taxes, you pay for your prescriptions of whatever meds the pharma rep has written on the side of the freebies they bring this month and you are bloody lucky if you actually have the problem ever go away. 

Or you take charge of your own health and well being to the maximum extent possible, even if it includes getting off the couch and getting out of breath several times a week, and sending a bit of time learning about your body and how it works, and most importantly of all listening to it. 

I bet almost none of you meditate in any meaningful way. Half the battle to staying halfway healthy is to simply lie down in a quite place, get comfortable and BREATHE whilst engaging with your body properly.. 

We treat our bodies like most of you treat your cars, you can just about manage to put fuel in and some of you can check your own fluids, (oil/water/hydraulic/brake fluid/ PS fluid for level let alone consistency colour and smell) and maybe notice a tyre gong down, but who cleans under the wheel arches, or can feel  when a suspension component is failing and identify which one?  

Blithely outsourcing the maintenance of the things on which you rely totally like your body and your car, far from being a virtue to signal, is utter weakness, and "learned helplessness".

There's a lot of it going around, these days.

1. The first nurse was not interested at all. The second nurse who sent me on my way was literally back turned to be and said so just use RICE and get your heal to the ground, goodbye. Now I am confused and worried as my ankle is still very painful, the area of pain has increased and my ankle looks deformed with reduced swelling. I need the doctors/nurses to listen to me and my genuine concerns instead of dismissing me with absolutely no care or reassurance. 

I have no doubt the nurse knew what she was doing as she will have seen many cases like hers before. What is missing is her explanation of why she has come to the conclusions she has. You say that yiyr ankle has improved with the treatment she suggested which means the advice was correct but not delivered  well. Also, I know how I felt after 3 hours in a crowded, busy and noisy A&E waiting room. It is real hell for any Autistics. I was then faced with a doctor who looked more ill than I was. 

Your responses are not useful or relevant 

Sorry, I get triggered when I contemplate how the NHS works these days.. I lived in the sixties when hospitals were clean well run and organised.

This is incredibly dangerous. Not only are the xrays dangerous,  yiy are suggesting that someone diagnoses themselves. You have also missed the point that Autism is still not understood by many, including doctors and nurses. This does not mean we should diagnosed ourselves.

That doesn't really help with my dilemma though. Why would I buy an x-ray machine. I just need help navigating A&E. 

There's a hole in the market growing for competently administered quick medical services isn't there?

Instead of the NHS,  those of us who actually want to get on with our lives instead of queining up for incompetence and third rate service will end up starting the AHS (Alternative Health Services)

IF I was to add up all the time spent receiving doctors "services" over the years and the money wasted on prescriptions and all the malarkey and chains of people required to get the scrip honoured, to NOT correctly diagnose or fix my foot issues Versus the cost of the pot of Vicks vapour rub that actually does work. then multiply that inefficiency across the scale of the NHS, there's a considerable wastage that can be cut form the national budget.

Mind you all those scrips they wrote for medazolan during covid, must have saved the nation a pretty penny, but nowhere near as much as we all lost to the aborted "ventilatior challenge" project. (£440m)

last time I looked you can buy a small x-ray machine form china on ebay for about 250 quid...

I want to know what's going on with a toe I think I broke about 15years ago, but trying t get a casual x-ray out of the NHS is like panning for gold in a sewerage works.

Even if you win, was it really worth the effort and crap you had to put up with?