A gran was left "humiliated and degraded" after two consecutive eight-hour stays in A&E - including one in which she lay on a metal bench.
June Whiley, 86, was told to visit the emergency department on Wednesday October 27 after experiencing severe head pain, dizziness and dehydration.
But following an initial triage in University Hospital of Wales (UHW) in Cardiff, the pensioner spent some eight hours in the waiting area before being assessed and discharged home.
The pensioner took a further turn for the worse the next day, though, and was advised by her GP to return to A&E immediately.
And Wales Online reports June ended up lying on a cold, hard metal bench, after feeling as though she was going to collapse in the wheelchair hospital staff had given her.
The grandmother of two, wearing a nightie, dressing gown and draped in a blanket given to her by paramedics waiting outside, was also sick several times in front of countless other patients.
June, from Roath, Cardiff, said: "I have been to the A&E many times, but I have never experienced anything like this before in my life.
"It's not the fault of the doctors or nurses who were working their socks off. But they were completely understaffed and I would never want to experience anything like that ever again. The doctors and nurses deserve a medal.
The NHS trust says "services [are] under considerable strain" due to the pandemic.
But June's daughter Nicola Barnes, who was with her frail mother during the entire ordeal as she could barely see, was disgusted to see her mum stricken.
She said: "It was absolute bedlam in there. The nurses were running around like headless chickens, people were sitting on the floor and I saw someone walking out because they couldn't stand to be there any longer.
"To see my 86-year-old mother in that position, who's paid her National Insurance and worked all her life, was just disgusting."
June has been experiencing problems with her eyes, including age-related macular degeneration, for years and had suffered a retinal hemorrhage only months before which required injections.
Recalling the events of Wednesday, October 27, Nicola said: "When I came home from work my mother was sitting in my living room and she looked absolutely awful. She was holding her head and she looked like she was going to collapse.
"We tried ringing Specsavers first to look at the back of her eye and see if she's had another bleed, but they replied and said my mum would need to go straight to A&E."
When they walked into the emergency unit at UHW, Nicola said there "wasn't a seat in the house" so June ended up in a wheelchair for the duration of their first visit.
"It was absolutely chock-a-block in there. We got there at about 5.45pm, she was seen at about midnight and sent home about 1.30am."
However, June continued to deteriorate at home in the 24 hours that followed. A GP managed to visit her home in Roath to assess her, but stressed that she needed to go back to A&E for a second time as she had "turned grey" and could barely walk.
"We asked the doctor if there was any way we could have an ambulance for her, but he said we'd be looking at a 36-hour wait," Nicola added.
On arrival at UHW on Thursday, October 29, Nicola said June was taken to a "green" area of the waiting room occupied by non-Covid patients. However, following an assessment she was found to have a slight temperature and placed in an "amber" area for suspected positive cases.
"My mum was vomiting into a wooden bowl in front of all these people. I was going back and forth to the nurses pleading with them to give her some privacy - even if it was in a cupboard - but they said they had nowhere," said Nicola.
"There was no dignity for her at all. It was absolutely horrendous."
At around 3am on Friday, October 29, June asked to be taken out of the wheelchair she'd been in for many hours as she felt as if she was going to collapse.
"So we lay her down on these metal benches. By this point she was shivering as she as so cold. I was looking around for a nurse and I couldn't find one, but there were paramedics stood outside the door. I went up to them, crying my eyes out, and said 'please, please can I have a blanket for my mum in there?' And they said 'yes, we'll get you two'.
"You could see there were loads of ambulances outside A&E with patients in them waiting to come in."
Nicola said the only place to get her dehydrated mum a drink in A&E was a communal water fountain which had been used by scores of disgruntled patients already that night.
After roughly an eight-hour wait, June was given a CT scan and taken to an assessment ward next to A&E at 6am where she was seen by a junior doctor.
Nicola added: "Her vomiting had stopped because they'd given her an anti-sickness tablet. The junior doctor turned around and said that nothing had shown up on the CT scan. As he wasn't an eye doctor he put her on a saline drip and then sent her home with a letter saying she needed to go back to Specsavers."
Following the horrendous ordeal, June has now decided to pay for a private consultation and treatment at Spire Hospital in Pentwyn, Cardiff.
"Even if I have to remortgage my house, I would never go through that again," Nicola added.
Performance across Wales' accident and emergency departments has been deteriorating for several months. The target is for 95% of patients to spend no longer than four hours in A&E from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge.
However, latest Welsh Government figures revealed that only two-thirds (66.8%) of patients were there for four hours or less in September - the worst percentage since .
A spokeswoman for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said: "As we enter the winter months, we will be experiencing the most challenging period in NHS history. The continued pressure brought about by the pandemic has put our services under considerable strain, however we would like to assure staff, patients and visitors that we have a robust plan in place and are working to alleviate pressures to ensure people have the best possible access to care.
"Our emergency unit remains increasingly busy. We would like to take the opportunity to remind people that if their condition is not life or limb threatening they can call our CAV 24/7 service on 0300 10 20 247 and our team will assess them and direct them to the most appropriate service.
"We would also like to encourage people to get vaccinated. Getting vaccinated provides the best protection against serious illness from viruses such as the flu and Covid-19."
