Penicillin

I always feel a twinge of guilt when anyone mentions penicillin. More of that in a moment. 

Proactively, Dan rang 111 today to sort out some meds for his throat, and was told we could collect them from Asda. Nice work Dan, 111, and Asda!

Except the pharmacist at Asda thought Dan might have quinsy again so we had to go to the UTC at Westmorland General, where we were partially entertained by the TV in the waiting area playing the latest (I guess) instalment of 'Jurassic Park', with the sound turned down. 

Anyway, God bless the NHS, and a 90 minute wait was tolerable enough as we came home with the antibiotics. 

As to my twinge of guilt: when I was about ten, and we were living in Hong Kong, we went on a cruise on a boat called (I think) The Rasa Sayang. During the passage I developed toothache and we went to see the ship's doctor. 

She wanted to prescribe me penicillin but needed to test me to make sure I wasn't allergic to it. The test was simple enough, I think: she wanted to run a wire - that's how I remember it, anyway - down the inside of my forearm to create a scratch and then rub some penicillin on it.

Well, I was having none of it. 

In the end, probably at her wit's end, she said she'd do it to herself to show me it was no big deal. So she did and cut her arm quite badly, certainly much more than a scratch. So that was the end of that as far as I was concerned. 

And I honestly can't remember what happened about the toothache.