what & when was your first visit to Doctors that you remember ?

I remember seeing him at my bedside when I had terrible earache. He sent my father out for something to relieve the pain and it was a long wait until he came back, then the pain lessened, and I was able to sleep.
I must have been about five.

I can remember going to doc when I was about 4 - I had belly ache and he felt my tum and said "You are all wind and water!" - I still am!

I remember going into hospital in about 1953 to have my tonsils and adenoids out. We lived in the north of Scotland at the time and the hospital obviously did a roaring trade in tonsillectomies as we children were two to a bed, top and tail.

When I was about 9 or 10 my baby teeth would not fall out so it was decided I had to have a load of them out . My mother was a nurse so she pinned a sheet over the kitchen table and the doctor and dentist came to the house to deal with me. I still remember the feeling of the mask on my face and the strange things I saw as I went under . I woke up on the sofa with blood dripping from my mouth. My friend Marie arrived after school bringing me gobstoppers which I proceeded to suck .

My first 'medical' memory is haing to have my nose cauterised! I was about five. I kept getting nose bleeds so that was the treatment. Hurt like hell!

My father WAS the doctor. So he was always there. But like the cobblers children!

I was 19 and at work so needed a sick note for impetigo! Worked in a dispensary so that was where I caught it according to the doctor.

I lived in Salford, so I had bronchitis every winter. My mother rarely took any of us to the doctor but I do remember going when I was about 8 and having my chest sounded. It is the smell of disinfectant I remember most.
He wondered why I had some tenderness round my ribs - I didn't tell him that it was because I shared a very narrow single bed with my sister, who was four years older and very bad tempered if her sleep was disturbed. Every time I coughed she bashed me with her elbow. We laugh about it now but she says she is ashamed!
It is horrible to lie in bed trying to stifle a coughing fit but I was too scared of the dark to go downstairs and I didn't like to wake my mother. There were also lots of beetles and mice in the house which terrified me.

I was about 3 and the next door kids got whooping cough. Mum decided to get me immunised, so that was my first visit to the GP.

Next week we went for a booster shot, but I wasn't daft - the second I saw that needle I declared "You're not sticking THAT in me again!" and I was half way out of the window when they caught me.

Poor Mum. AND it was just before July 1948 when the National Health came in, so she had to pay quite a lot. Still, I never got whooping cough.

The first visit I remember was when I was about 5 years old and got an orange pip stuck up my nose. Don't know how it got there in the first place, but it came out when I did a lot of crying in the waiting room

One early memory -- with other small children, stark naked apart from a pair of dark goggles we sat on chairs with a sheet of tissue on them in front of a big, square 'sun-lamp'.

More often than not the doctor would come to me rather than my going there - he always complimented my mother on being a good nurse... Doctor Finnegan always wore a black jacket and striped trousers - and he came in a car! If you saw a car parked outside someone's house, you knew someone wasn't well... that was in wartime, of course...

feetlebaum I'm intrigued. why did you have to sit in front of a 'sun-lamp'?

Vit D!

feetlebaum where you being treated for lack of vitamin D or jaundice ? mr.glamma can remember his cousin having something similar but can't remember what the problem was.

Having been born with two bad squints my nan used to say ''one eye on the pot and t'other up the chimney'' my earliest recollection at the age of 3 was staying in Moorfields eye hospital in Aldgate,in the childrens ward just before I had my op to correct one eye a nurse came and as I told my mum put a jellybaby up my bottom....we could never think why,only as I got older and more enlightened did it occur to me it must have been a suppository so I didnt 'go' while I was asleep.

I had all the childhood diseases that we used to get back in the day - measles,mumps,whooping cough and chicken pox - I think my mother treated us but did call for a doctor when we had measles, which is a serious childhood illness. My father was in the Forces and we travelled a great deal - most of my 'medical memories' was Dad driving us to the base doctor for our immunisations for our next trip. We had them all - Chlorea,tyhphus,polio, yellow fever, boosters of any childhood ones given earlier. Many with nasty side effects - we had very painful arms,fever and sickness after our Chlorea jabs. We even had another jab on a troop ship we were on coming back from Hong Kong - yellow fever again - this was 1956 and Nasser had closed the Suez Canal to British ships so we had 3 weeks extra on our trip and went around the Cape. It was no good my mother saying we had had that one - you were due to have it and that was that. We never injured ourselves and until I had my tonsils out at seventeen never been in a hospital. I dare say with all those jabs no nasty germs dare visit our bodies.

I remember walking to the local hospital, holding my arm and hand at a most peculiar angle! About a mile across the village, it felt quite weird.
One of the local boys was torturing a kitten, picking him by the tail and flicking him around, picking him up and starting again. I tried to make him stop, and he pushed me back very hard. I fell and put my hand out, and the elbow broke. He run away (I was about 6 and he a big butch 12 year old).
The doctor couldn't believe it when I walked into his surgery. Anyway, 3 months in plaster. And never knew what happened to the poor kitten- I went to try and find him with my dad ... but it was gone. I was a lot more upset about that.

Talking about vit D and jaundice, are babies still being born with birth jaundice? My first was, as were about 4 others. They put them in a perspex crib with their eyes covered and a sunlight above them. I remember how the other babies were upset, but my lad reclined and relaxed as if he were in St Tropez, sunbathing. This was Staincliffe Hospital, Dewsbury 1979.

Come to think of it, he always acted as if he had been born 'posh'. He even talks with the poshest Australian accent there is, known as a 'North Shore' (Sydney) accent even though he has broad Yorkshire speaking parents and grew up in a very working class part of Queensland. Of course, this stands him in good stead now, as one of the subjects he teaches his 15-18 year olds at high school is English.

He is getting married on Saturday - the 21st.

Sorry - I digressed...........

@grannyactivist "I'm intrigued. why did you have to sit in front of a 'sun-lamp'?"

Because it was there! I don't know - I suppose the belief was that town-dwelling kids didn't get the full benefit of the sun... maybe they were afraid the we weren't producing enough Vit E -- rickets?

Modern medicine was only really feeling its way in those days.

And we a were immunized at the same place, against diptheria, I remember.

When I was about 6 the doctor came and diagnosed scarlet fever.I was whisked off late at night in an ancient ambulance to a nearby isolation hospital.
The small hospital was staffed by one doctor and his wife (a nurse) plus one or two orderlies.On visiting days I could only wave to mum and dad through the window.I always cried when they left.The doctor did magic tricks to cheer us up.and gave us chocolate and orange. I'd never had that combination before but I still love it.

Goldengirl and Annobel, you took me back in time with the syrup of figs! I remember it came in a dark bottle and had "California Syrup of Figs" on the label. My mum would dose me with it all the time and it tasted really awful. I remember one day refusing to have it and my mum threatening me with having a suppository instead so needless to say I swallowed it. Its funny but I quite like figs now, and prunes.

The first time I remember going, he palpated my belly and said "It's all wind and water in there" - it still is!

1945 - Doctor Bethel came to me. I was four and I had taken myself to bed. He diagnosed scarlet fever. He had to go to the village kiosk to ring for an ambulance. When I was put into it, I stuck my tongue out at the lovely nurse [didn't like her mask]. I was taken to Daventry hospital and put into isolation/darkened room/no visitors. I started wetting the bed and remember the shame all too well. When I returned home [it had been fumigated] I found it difficult to walk. Had a brace on my right leg. Same leg has given me trouble ever since.

I remember being put over my mum's knee with my bum-cheek exposed so that Dr Harvey could give me a polio immunisation.....

Carolb I enjoyed the weekly syrup of figs! I don't know if it did any good only giving it once a week though. If you hadn't had a poo for a whole week I would think you would need a darn sight more than syrup of figs to get you going!
This was from a mother who thought fibrous food gave you tummy ache!