Hubby had a playdate scheduled this week which is more of an unusual occurrence for him than it is for me - have I mentioned that I don't have single free day in the entire summer holiday? - but it was cancelled by T's mum that morning. Apparently she said that T had a cough so she was taking her to the doctor. Then she offered to re-schedule for the next day when she was sure T would be better.

Hubby reported this to me with incredulity. #1. Why take your child to the doctor with a cough? #2. Why, particularly if you're assuming they will be better within 24 hours, take your child to the doctor with a cough? He couldn't understand the logic and, not for the first time, I felt relieved that hubby's doctor-going culture is on a par with mine. Hubby recalls the doctor being called to his family 3 times in his life - when his brother, sister and father had kidney stones. He recalls visiting the doctor when he had broken bones. I'm the same. The doctor visited us once when, as a 9 year old child, I had my first-ever migraine. I remain eternally grateful though slightly concerned at the fact that on visiting a child who was in agony, unable to face any noise or light, unable to open eyes or speak, the doctor correctly diagnosed a migraine and didn't rush me in to face casualty, lumbar punctures and IV antibiotics. I'm not sure I'd manage the same now. I don't recall ever going to the doctor other than with split open head (twice) requiring stitches. We did go with my brother a fair bit as a baby but he was really really sick*.

Of course I'm no longer surprised by people popping their coughing children off to the doctor. I see them all the time. Except I am still surprised. I wonder what people are worrying about. Obviously there are some children - the brittle asthmatics and the ones with lung disease - who need to come at the first sign of illness. But everyone else? Coughs happen. They drag on and on and on. Even a bacterial chest infection doesn't require a doctor. You can still fight off bacterial infections without the aid of anti-biotics. I've never listened to my children's chests even when they have coughs and colds. I assume they have normal immunity and therefore will fight things off.

And if your child gets better within 48 hours of starting antibiotics, it wasn't the antibiotics that helped. It would have happened anyway.

Quite often I assume there must be something weird that's worrying them. That the guy with 12 hours of diarrhoea and vomiting must have been frightened by news reports of an E Coli outbreak. But no. "I just thought it couldn't keep going like this and I wanted something to make me better". Bed. Fluids. Rest. Nothing else. What did your mother teach you?

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I read a blog where the mother was berating the doctor for not picking up a strep throat. I repeat - just because an infection is bacterial doesn't mean you have to have antibiotics.

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I have a new trainee. We were chatting about medical culture. We are expected nowadays to ask what the patient thinks might be wrong. The older patients hate it "You're the doctor; you tell me". Like the lady in her 70s who came in with saggy upper arms (uh-huh). Or the guy with itchy elbows that itched on and off with no rash and no other problem for the last 6 months. Or the lady with vague abdominal discomfort lasting a few minutes a month for the past 20 years. And who all look at me like I'm an imposter when I say I don't know what's wrong with them. Don't know because - didn't you know? - they've stopped running the course in medical school called "What is wrong with the people who don't have anything actually medical wrong with them but come to see you anyway". Although, come to think of it, it would be a hell of a lot more use than "Signs and symptoms of Addison's disease" (nope, never seen) or even "HIV and AIDS" (once we pick it up they get transferred to the HIV medics and we virtually never see them again).

But asking that question can sometimes be informative. Miss it out and you can miss a lot of things that make life a lot more simple. More bizarre but more simple. Like the young guy who came in with a 2 week history of left shoulder and left arm pain after lifting a heavy table. For form's sake I examined him; I started to explain the mechanism of his shoulder injury. He glazed over till I'd finished. "So, um, are you going to listen to my chest?" Hmmm. No I wasn't going to. Why? "Well, you know, I've got left arm pain so I thought maybe I had a heart problem". Ah. Bloody British Heart Foundation**. Every chest pain a heart attack. Every arm pain also a heart attack.

Where did common sense go?

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Do I sound harsh? I don't mean to. I don't mind seeing coughs, colds and any manner of crap. I just think people who live like this (I seriously have a family where I have seen the daughter every single week of her life. She's even been in hospital twice. Yet there is nothing more wrong with her than a tendency - a la most young children - to pick up every viral illness doing the rounds) must live in a state of such stress. Not being able to make a basic decision about the health of a child or themselves without a doctor's say-so.

I don't know the answers. I wish I did. Maybe it was better in the old days when doctors told their patients the most fantastic explanations to get them off their backs reassure them. Except when I have used far-fetched explanations, it's always come back to bite me. "Doctor, you told me that as we get older our muscles start to sag more. Is that why my ear lobes are lower than they used to be?" And people want to google everything nowadays. So telling them they have cerebrolucency*** is out too.