When ds1 was about 6 months old he got a non-blanching rash so I whizzed him over to the GP who sent us on to a&e plus notified them we were coming so he would be seen quickly. They looked, decided it was nothing, 'just a virus' and sent us on our way with instructions to carry on with the calpol.
A couple of weeks later I read in the papers about another child that had been seen in similar circumstances and also sent away but it turned out they had had meningitis and had died of it 
.
At the time I was very nervous going when ds seemed to have lots of red flags for meningitis - the non blanching rash, the high temp that wasn't coming down despite medicine, listless etc - but they were adamant there wasn't a problem and you don't like to say 'admit him anyway just to check because he's definitely not well and better safe than sorry', so I reluctantly took him home. And so many times over the years I've wondered if I should have made a stand to get him monitored (they didn't monitor him at all, just looked at him during the time he was in with the doctor) and what would have happened if it had turned out to be something more serious - would I have taken him back to a&e in time?
This was a big london teaching hospital and it wasn't a particularly busy time of day, plus it had a special kids a&e section that we were in so they were used to dealing with kids.
When ds had similar symptoms 6 months later we'd moved and thus took him to a different hospital to be checked out. They were a lot more cautious, admitted him onto a day ward, monitored him and worked out exactly how much calpol and nurofen they could give him to try to get his temperature down quickly rather than take the standard dose, checked the rash didn't change and so on. We felt so much more secure going home the second time than we did the first. Surely there can't be that many kids that turn up with such symptoms that they couldn't monitor them for at least an hour or two, rather than just think that the parents are fussing about 'just a virus' and send home a potentially very ill child.
So glad to hear that your dd was one of the lucky ones and is on the mend!