Chapter 33: In which the Duke is distinctly unwell...
A few years back at the tail end of a long drizzly winter. Spring is blearily opening an eye, wondering whether she should hit the snooze button one more time and the Duke is feeling just a tad under the weather.
So, as one does, I leap manfully onto my trusty* motorcycle and hie myself to the GP and explain that I'm not feeling so good. Coughing rather a lot and getting very little sleep because of it.
Doctor listens intently, makes a note on his pad and informs me quite ernestly that he can't give me anything for it because a simple virus won't respond to antibiotics. My best plan is to rest and come back in two weeks.

Two weeks pass.
I climb wearily onto my two wheeled steed and head back to the docs. Still not at all well I tell him. Coughing pretty much all day every day now. Breathing doesn't feel right.
Doctor listens intently, makes a note on his pad and informs me quite ernestly that he can't give me anything for it because a simple virus won't respond to antibiotics. My best plan is to rest and come back in two weeks.

Another two weeks drag their increasingly snot laden way past the camera.
I catch the bus to the doctors, trying to keep my haggard germ laden breath away from the doddery old dears infesting the wating room like a flock of doom crows. Their gnarled claws just waiting to snatch the last gasp of the living to extend their nightmare existance another few seconds... Things were getting a little surreal by this point.
Tell the doctor that I'm having real. Trouble. Breathing. And I. Really. Really. Don't feel well...
Doctor listens intently, makes a note on his pad and informs me quite ernestly that he can't give me anything for it because a simple virus won't respond to antibiotics. My best plan is to rest and come back in two weeks.

Repeat.

Repeat.

Go home. Fall asleep to dreams of strange and curious landscapes in which the walruses are kings over the honeybees. Wake up with Best Beloved looking at me with her stern face on. Get dragged to her doctor and barely get a chance to explain that I'm not well before she's taking my blood oxygen levels and looking worried. She starts writing down prescriptions and asks me who the other doctor was and what had given me.
So I tell her, and she looks horrified.
"Come back in two weeks ?" she says, scribbling furiously. "You've got bacterial bronchitis and a high fever. Without proper medical attention you wouldn't have two weeks..."

I leave the nearby chemist with two inhalers, a bag full of antibiotics, and some horrible horrible steroids.

Current Doctor writes sharp note to local health care trust.

Previous doctor has since ceased practicing.

I'm Still alive.

Call it a draw.

* Letter T optional
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Thu 11 Mar 2010, 17:35, 1 reply)

I have a similar story
Several of my bike riding friends have had to take a year off from riding to have nasty operations on their knees, which start with a bit of pain.

I've had pain for the last 12 months. Keep going to the doctor and they keeps saying it's nothing to worry about. I had to crawl up my stairs on Sunday night it was so bad (although not so bad now as I've been resting).
( thistle, Thu 11 Mar 2010, 21:57, closed)