I'm sorry you have been through a hard time. If you do have an infection, it seems that it is not at a life threatening stage, although I know these things are really undignified, painful and emotionally difficult.
The thing that stands out for me is that you were well enough to drive for an hour. This would have been apparent to the surgery, when deciding whether your care was more critical than other patients'.
From someone whose DP almost died from a perforated bowel recently, I know how terrifying this can be. I struggled to get him into the car, and he screamed over every bump in the road. He could not walk, let alone drive. I had called the GP 66 times before I got through. It's bloody hard to get an appointment at my practice.
We got to the bloody appointment on time, I don't have a clue how, but we did it. I had to drive at 10mph, and cut someone up (unintentionally) to avoid a pothole.
We had already dialled 111, had an ambulance sent, followed by a lengthy, painful misdiagnosis in A&E. We watched the drunk, abusive arses being processed quickly. My OH sat in silence, rocking on morphine, in a plastic chair. He then suffered at home for several days, deteriorating rapidly.
When he finally had a correct diagnosis, A&E refuted it because 'he would have been dead'. His lower pelvis was a huge abscess, due to the delays. Even the surgeons were baffled at how inaccessible it was. But they worked for hours, and he survived.
Thank goodness our GP saw him on time, instead of prioritising patients who had been late because they were stuck in traffic.
My DP is alive because of that man. If we had been 10 minutes late, we knew we would not have been seen. That is the rule at our practice. I would have just driven back to A&E, in sheer panic.
It isn't just coughs and colds. It really isn't.
You get your 'GP twats', your 'A&E twats', your '999 twats'. They will always be a nuisance, but I hope we live in a society where the gravely ill can be differentiated from those who need less urgent care.
Had you been screaming in the passenger seat, I'd like to think that they would have made a different decision. Unfortunately the NHS is hideously under resourced. This must change.
I do hope that you get the care that you need, and sympathetic staff who treat you with kindness and respect.