Advice please do I go a&e?

[MeMyBooksAndMyCats]

Past 5 days I've had a dry hacking cough, that is leaving me gasping for breath. I'm very breathless.
Coughing up foamy white mucus with brown/red flecks in it sorry TMI!
My chest In the middle hurts and feels like a elephant sat on it. Got a headache non stop, feel dizzy & faint. The back of my throat at the top feels damaged I've coughed that much.
I have asthma on top and my inhalers despite being strong ones aren't helping. Drank more than enough water and it's not helping, have cough medicines that aren't doing jack sh^t!

Tried for two days to get through to my GP to be seen and can't get an appointment. No walk in centre by me.
It's killing me off, last night I barely slept as I kept waking up gasping for air and coughing. 😭
Not sure if I'm being over dramatic but it's so damn painful. Haven't been anywhere to get a cough, all my family & people I've seen don't have a cough/cold neither so I don't think it's a cold I've caught.

If she doesn't feel better from pneumonia in 24 hours, phone an ambulance?

Are you serious?

Rest up op and let the meds do their thing. So glad you’ve been seen, you must feel very relieved.

I’m glad the GP could help and you’re not stuck waiting in A&E

Hope it improves soon

Yes I am. Antibiotics work quickly, usually within 3 doses to alleviate symptoms, so if that hasn’t happened, she absolutely should call an ambulance, go to hospital and get at a minimum, a D-dimer test done, to rule out anything more!

Because, news flash, you can have more than one thing wrong with you at a time and given that OP was symptomatic for 5 days, then yes.

She has an underlying (serious)health condition, was (and may still be) tachycardic, hasn’t even mentioned being asked to give a sputum sample, so yes. If the antibiotics don’t work as effectively as they should, she needs to go to ED, where they can do a D-dimer and get the results within 30 minutes, have a HRCT undertaken and have her heart rate monitored. And no ED professional would blame her for going!

It is not for anyone, whether on a forum or in real life, to police someone else’s legitimate concerns about their health and certainly not to tell them that they’ll “get over it”!

I’ve had this (with covid) and I have dodgy lungs generally (lung damage from childhood whooping cough infection, exercise induced asthma).

I wouldn’t go to A&E unless my blood oxygen sats went below 90/85 on my home monitor. Absolute rest, fluids, mindful breathing, Fisherman’s friends and olbas oil usually help after a few days. Waiting in a hospital for 13 hours probably won’t help you.

but you know your body so if you think it’s more serious, follow your instincts and seek help.

I'm not insulting you. I'm saying, as others have done, that your advice is terrible. I would say that if we were having a face to face conversation, trust me! No doctor would thank you for asking an emergency to just present at the surgery after they've been refused an appointment on the ground that it is not an emergency. Why advise something doctors would not sanction? Your anecdotal experience is not relevant, really. Unfortunately things have gone downhill. That said, I'm glad you were helped. A lot of people are not so lucky at the moment.

Can you get telephone GP appontment?

@walkinthewoodstoday - op has been to the dr and has given an update on her condition.

I got the impression she could not get an appointment. But not that they refused to give her one because thy did not consider her an emergency. Just all booked up or something.
I offered my experience of what was, for me, an emergency as when I did present in person I was attended to. I did get seen.
As it turns out her GP did see her, and has provided her with treatment which we all hope works for her and she recovers.
I just wanted to explain how I read her post about the appointment.