Don't people ever just feel a bit unwell?

[PowerPack]

Adult DS1 has a sore throat. I went out early this morning, his GF was staying here. He's perfectly well in himself, but he has a very sore throat. I'd advised paracetamol, plenty of liquids and a restful day.

GF has told him she thinks he has tonsillitis and they've called 111 to be told he does indeed have viral tonsillitis....to take paracetamol and he should improve within a few days. So he has a sore throat in my book.

He's never made a drama about illness before, the doctor must have been contacted previously in the year he's been with her than in the previous 20years, but I suppose I have to keep out of it?

Yesterday she wasn't feeling well and he "had to" carry her from the car to her bed.

They've gone out now...

I can’t believe anyone otherwise young and healthy would ring 111 for a sore throat, how pathetic. No wonder the NHS is fucked.

I think you either go to the doctor/call 11 every time you feel a bit off or you soldier on with a limb hanging off rather than bother the NHS. There is no in between 😬

I can't imagine requesting to be carried in from a car though. Surely you're more likely to get dropped or slammed into a door frame causing more damage?

All those who think calling 111 for a sore throat is bad should try living in the US. I lived there for a bit and people seem to go to the doctor and get antibiotics as soon as they feel a sore throat coming on.

I had a colleague visiting from the US recently and she came into the office one morning asking for help finding a doctor because she ‘needed some antibiotics’, because she had a slightly sore throat.

I think this is one of the reasons A&E is so clogged up. I say one of, as otherwise it's people who can't see a GP.

My in-laws are like this. They can never just be a bit under the weather, it has to be as dramatic as possible (and requires multiple doctors visits with requests for tests and antibiotics).

They also love to dramatise any illness that other people have too… if I speak to them when I have a sniffle, they’ll ask how I’m feeling in a hushed sympathetic voice for weeks after, no matter how many times I insist I’m fine… it’s nice they care, I guess

I do also think that any little sniffle during covid was presumed to be covid, so I think people are perhaps more hypervigilant nowadays.

I know the group, I'm there myself.

The problem there is when people ask for advice it's quite dangerous to say you'll probably be fine because of the one occasion it's not fine. It's always better to er on the side of caution. But on the whole, I agree with you

The US based groups all say no dosing advice

I currently have covid and the worst symptom by a country mile is a very sore throat. On day 4 of the sore throat I did a lateral flow, which came up as a very faint positive, day 5 it was a clear positive. Nothing is doing much for the sore throat btw. The other night I could hardly swallow my saliva. The best thing I've found is Jakeman's menthol and liquorice sweets.

A sore throat is apparently the most common first symptom of covid, so he'd be wise to stay away from anyone vulnerable.

Tonsillitis only means inflammation of the tonsils.

The GP has said it's viral (not bacterial) tonsils because that's what a sore throat is, and you can't treat it beyond resting and plenty of fluid (although of course you can alleviate the pain with paracetamol plus camomile tea/ ice-cream 😁).

There are two types of people..those who run to the doctor over every single little thing and those who never bother. Basically I am always surprised how the former actually manage to get to see a doctor these days in the first place.

Bacterial tonsillitis is a different beast and what people think of when they think of "real" tonsillitis.

Meanwhile people are stuck on hold with actual conditions requiring urgent medical attention.

We recently had to do a 111 for asthma attacks followed a week later by a 999 call (based on the advice the previous week) As the attack was finally subsiding, we were put on an Urgent Care pathway by A&E resulting in an all nighter at the weekend. The waiting room began to fill with lethargic children. Towards midnight, the Dr coming off shift announced that there was 1 GP on duty, over 32 patients in the adult waiting room and a minimum 6 hour wait to be seen and it might be worth evaluating whether it was worthwhile... DS needed an urgent review of his inhalers so we stayed put and held out until 5am (new medication issued). Meanwhile within 2 minutes of the Dr's announcement there was a mass exodus of families with ailing toddlers that would probably have been better off with Calpol and bed anyway rather than an all nighter in a crowded, brightly lit waiting room.
Ironically DS had injured himself the previous month (it's now rumbled on for two months), and it was hours of loitering in that waiting room where I caught Covid presumably from the toddler "who needed antibiotics for his virus" as their parent said 🤦‍♀️ (Due to DS's injury it was the only indoor place I visited on the appropriate timescale).

It's just one of those phases where DS has ended up needing more medical intervention in two months than in the previous 5 years. Why people regularly go for that approach as a matter of course mystifies me. There's good information online to indicate appropriate pathways for routine health issues without going straight to long nights in Urgent Care.

It does seem like 2+ years of Covid symptom spotting/ alert and disruption of seasonal illness patterns has interfered with people's ability to confidently manage minor ailments.

I haven’t come across this, but I have come across the older generation being a lot less tolerant of illness in any form. My mother specifically is incredibly unsympathetic, and minimises illness in others positively brusquely. I told her I was getting migraines, and she cut me off with ‘well, how do you know they aren’t just headaches?’ before I even got to the end of the sentence. (They aren’t. They have been diagnosed by my doctor. Which I would have told her if she hadn’t jumped on me!) As a child, not going to school was practically unheard of, and aches and pains routinely dismissed. I distinctly remember being ill in bed at about 12 and my mother not even coming in to see me for three days. Of course, I was able to fend for myself, but as a child some visible concern would have been kind. I’ve no doubt she cared, but you’d never know it by the way she treats you. I actually think she has a lot of health anxiety and deals with it by shutting it down.

I do think health was treated with less concern than it should be in the past, although I sometimes think people have swung the other way.

My son vomited a few times and I immediately thought tummy bug. Obviously avoid doctors. Didnt get better so I took him and he had an ear infection and the doctor got very mad I hadn’t taken him earlier!! So I thought okay. Maybe I need to be a bit more on the ball.

so when I fainted a few times in a week I told the doctor. Who immediately sent me to wait in a&e 4 hours for them to tell me I fainted.

ive gone back to being too relaxed now!

YANBU I was at the walk in centre today and the amount of people there for shit that should be dealt with at the chemists was insane - 3 cases of conjunctivitis for example!!!

Quite! And actually if you are prone to bacterial tonsillitis you know what it looks like and it’s very easy to call a GP and get a prescription over the phone. No appts needed or wasted!

Ugh YANBU. 2 of my close friends are like this. They / their children are always ill with something specific, never just a cold or flu. One of them (healthy adult) called 111 the other day because she had a fever of 38. Her dd is always off nursery with supposed tonsillitis or a chest infection. The other friend makes doctors appointments for everything. Always taking her dd in to be tested for a uti. Told me not to bother getting my ds referred for speech therapy because the waiting list was 3+ months. My ds was referred and seen within a couple of weeks. Turns out her ds's speech was OK and just didn't need intervention!