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AIBU?

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A and E

53 replies

Wheresmymaternalinstinct · 20/09/2026 20:48

Please don't give out to me, I'm not in the UK so it's not the NHS.

DS has been sick for 10 days plus. Bad head cold, pain in cheek, headache and generally crap. Have been dosing him up with nurofen, paracetamol and sudofed. He's no better.

This afternoon, he became very cold, shivering, fever of 38.8, headache severely worse,had a couple of incidents where he said his vision went dark and he thought he would pass out. Temp came down to 38 after nurofen but headache worse.

He is alert and talking.

The outside of hours advice I got was that he probably needs antibiotics, so to try to
A. Get them first thing in the morning from GP
B. Check if I or my family have leftover antibiotics that I can start him on!!!
C. Bring him to A and E if I think he has sepsis or meningitis.

I really don't know. It's a bit of a trek to nearest hospital and I would really rather not go, but what if its sepsis

OP posts:
Wheresmymaternalinstinct · 21/09/2026 09:07

OneCoralGoose · 21/09/2026 06:39

Did Caredoc middoc or whatever not see you. The person on the phone isnt a doctor. If they saw you they would have done checks. But err on the side of caution

Yes, a doctor. I asked her to see him but she wouldn't. Said there was no point because if they needed to check for sepsis they'd need to do bloods. But like, she could have done some form of assessment surely?

OP posts:
borborygmus1 · 21/09/2026 09:41

Fever and that level of dizziness means treatment asap is needed/emerging sepsis needs to be excluded.

Sudofed shouldn't be used for more than a few days as it causes rhinitis medicamentosa (I.e. an increase of nasal secretions) if used for too long.

A GP would usually advise for him to be taking a steroid nasal spray eg. Beconase instead of sudofed.

But yes, he's hitting some red flags for sinusitis and you need to exclude infection penetrating deeper as soon as you can. Untreated sinusitis can (rarely) cause meningitis if it the infection deepens.

ratatouillemousesqueak · 21/09/2026 15:50

I think you did the right thing based on symptoms. And bad sinus infection can still be horrendous and have lasting serious effects.

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