Coming back home from work after a long day I found out that one of my children was running a very high temperature, limp and not himself. Adding to that my girlfriend was almost frantic with worry. Instead of rushing him to A&E, as most parents in their right minds would do, and waiting for hours until he had been seen I decided to call his usual Doctor's surgery; on the off chance that someone would answer.
As it was out if hours it was just a gamble, but it had paid off!!
The phone call was transferred to an out of hours call centre and answered by a very calm and knowledgeable lady who took a list of the symptoms that my son had indicated and instructed what we was to look out for. As she was a bit worried about his condition she didn't want to leave it to chance, so she arranged for our son to be seen by a doctor at 8.40pm on the same night, just 1 hour from our call on a Friday.
We were advised to go to the drop-in centre in Selly Oak, Birmingham - as they run an after hours consultancy which was by appointment only.
We got seen by the doctor, more or less straight away, and my son was given a check over and a clean bill of health, diagnosis the cold/flu. From then on my son is getting better (through various amount of Calpol and Ibuprofen) and his temperature is a lot lower then it was earlier and he is slowly getting back to his usual destructive self.
The reason for writing about this is that I wanted to share the fact that if you do find yourself in the same predicament as my girlfriend and myself was with our son, it might pay to try your Doctor's surgery first, chances are that you will get first class advice and access to a Doctor way quicker then you had originally thought.
Please bear in mind that this is only me sharing advice on what I had experienced and depending on the severity of the symptoms that any child is showing A&E may be the first and only option.
