in which embodiment is a terrible hobby

[kaberett]

Please tell me lovingly but firmly to book a damn' GP appointment?

I have had a cough for three and a half weeks now. Since about Friday there's a bigger component of misc. snuffles; after about two weeks it turned intermittently productive. Also as of about Friday evening I've started having slight crackling in my left lung on the tail end of exhale but not on inhale when taking deep breaths.

Also, as we know, I'm at relative-to-general-population high risk of Lung Stuff.

I am really really resistant to the idea of booking a GP appointment for this because of all my standard-issue Medical Trauma, but if you think this merits "... go to the doctor, Alex" then I would appreciate hearing it.

ETA poked at NHS 111 online; GP appointment now booked for 17:10 i.e. about five hours' time. Thank you. <3

Comments

[kaberett]

I have a week of antibiotics and have started taking them. <3

(Also I started out with "so I've had this cough for three and a half weeks-" and the GP was all "TWO IS LONG ENOUGH" with implied "COME IN SOONER NEXT TIME", which, well, I WOULD HAVE except i. I was on holiday in the Peak District and ii. actually I WAS getting better up to the beginning of the holiday, and I suspect at least some of the problem was staying in a cottage with a bit of a mould problem, which set my lungs off proper again. >_<)

[recessional]

Mom's basic rule of thumb is that anything that lasts longer than a week/week and a half deserves to have a GP appointment made Just To Check.

This gets finessed in specific contexts: like, I know I'm going to have a mostly dry, non-chest-crackling cough for an extra week after every time I have a cold, so when it's LONGER than that I know I need to go to the doc, but that's based on a very specific, absolutely repeatable/replicable pattern in my life w/r/t that kind of illness. If you don't have that pattern (and life in a context where healthcare is not a harmful expense), a week and a half is about the point where if it IS something, you'll be catching it proactively and/or nipping it in the bud, rather than playing catch up, while also being long enough to indicate that there's a reasonable chance it is something.

[kaberett]

Mmm, so, a complicating factor here is that the 2011/2012 winter was The Worst One Of My Life, featuring prominently among other horrors "... this inhaled steroid is only supposed to increase your pneumonia risk if you have COPD but WHOOPS", such that basically every time I *spent time with* someone with a cold I went in for antibiotics.

And then I went off those drugs, and my body stopped doing that (WHICH IS PRETTY GREAT LET ME TELL YOU), but it means that my calibration is wildly off because of the combination of "I was completely fucked in the head", "my shitty ex was contributing to this specifically around lung health"[1], and "good grief side effects".

So that context combined with six years of "haha everyone gets painful periods teenagers definitely don't get endometriosis why the fuck would we take you seriously get over it", combined with the immediate aftermath of going off those drugs where I was still super paranoid and went in a bunch and got told to go away because it was all fine, means that I'm, um, A Bit Wrong about wanting to be really obviously undeniably ill before I go ask a doctor to apply a stethoscope to me. I recognise this is pathological! But at least now I'm mostly managing to treat "sudden deterioration after three weeks, featuring raspier breathing" as "activate Get People To Make You Go To The Doctor" protocols. Just. Eesh.

[1] no like at the point that EVERY SINGLE breath was actively audibly crackly from across the room on both inhale and exhale, and also I was coughing so much I couldn't sleep, and also I was getting stabbing pains localised to my lower left lung when I took a breath, maybe he shouldn't have been telling me that Everyone Gets Colds and This Is Normal. MAYBE.