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

isthis, I was a bit confused about whether or not it was NHS. My dad was willing to pay, and the consultant saw me in the consulting room in his own home but the op was in NHS Glasgow Royal Infirmary (with a fine view of the Necropolis) and dad never got a bill. Those were the days.

First visit I remember I was about 3/4. I was running away from my Mother (I had done something naughty) and fell and cut my head. I remember it because the Doctor sent my Mum out of the room and questioned me about what had happened. Apparently he was checking if she had hit me (this was 60 years ago so I think that would have been unusual for the time).

I also remember being taken for an injection (can't remember which one), my Mother had me on her lap and I was crying and struggling, Mum held me down whilst a nurse tried to keep my arm still while the Doctor actually gave the injection. To this day I still don't like needles!!

annodomini that sounds horribly traumatic (large breast lump at 17 etc) but sometimes our NHS does work brilliantly well doesn't it? After all you're still with us! Assuming this was NHS.

My first actual visit to (as opposed to visit from) the doctor was when I found a large lump on my breast at the age of 17. Then it was a consultant the very next day and the op the day after. Non-malignant, thank goodness, and I managed to miss our house move while I was in hospital.

It wasn't my first visit. My early years were riven with unending tonsillitis until i had the darn things out. And chilblains!

But when I was about 8 or 9 I fell in the garden and got a big nasty splinter of wood under the veins in my wrist. Where is started to go very nasty, inflamed, pus-filled etc.

I was at my Nan's (which is odd as I had the fall in my home garden 140 miles away. So in the middle of this I must have gone on a family holiday trip to my Nan's). I was taken to the local Cottage Hospital (Leatherhead, Surrey or maybe Epsom) where the Nurse squirted ether on my wrist and attacked inexpertly with a scalpel.

The sharp blade grated on my wrist bone. I can still feel the sensation, plus the smell of the ether. Aaaaagh.

I think the ether was to numb the wrist with cold. Pretty darn crude. I still am near-phobic of injections, needles, having blood taken. I always fear the metal needle will grate on my bone again!

NO Deedaa the cod liver oil capsules were vile! In fact I don't think we had capsules. Didn't the stuff just come in a rectangular bottle with a metal screw cap? You drank it from a teaspoon. Surely no capsules in them days. "You were lucky. We lived in a crack in the road and ate lard ......"

The orange juice was very welcome. Great stuff. But a strange bright orange colour (can't have been its natural colour) and eye-wateringly sweet. I'm amazed it did anyone any good but it much have done!

I've mentioned it before though. Virol, that was what we really loved!

Minadex was lovely, and the bottles of orange juice we used to get from the clinic. I used to love chewing up the cod liver oil capsules we were given - what an odd child!

Gally I can remember Minadex, I loved it, I remember it was green and in a tall bottle. You can still buy it I think, or at least you could when my kids were little.

I was about 4 or 5 & I remember that because I was prone to nose bleeds I had blood vessels in my nose cauterised: OUCH!!!

In 1950 we were about to go to Egypt as my father was in the RAF. I was three and I'll never forget having all the necessary jabs. Boy, did my arm hurt.

When I was 3 I had whooping cough and the doctor came to the house to give me injections. My dad had to come home from work to hold me down as mother couldn't do it. This was pre National Health Service and had to be paid for. I do remember the injections and Dad was always in a rush because he had to get back to work.
We used to have cod liver oil and malt. I loved it. It was the nearest thing to toffee.

I don't remember ever going to the doctor, he always seemed to come to me so I suppose it must have been for measles and such. What I do remember is the embarrassment of standing in line at school, stripped down to vest and knickers to be measured and have vaccinations. And then there was the nit nurse. She was rough.

My first memory is being taken for a routine check up when I was about 3 or 4. I refused to let the doctor near me when I felt how cold his stethoscope was and my notes had the single comment "Screamed, and refused to be examined" My mother was furious because she thought that a decent doctor should have been able to cope with a small child, but the comment followed me round for years.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

@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.

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...........

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.

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.

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.

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.