Three days of being sick and I cannot keep water down

Poor you. Flat lemonade at room temperature was the only thing that stayed down for me, and ice lollies — the plain orange ones, not the creamy sort. Small and cold seemed to be the trick rather than the flavour.

Ginger did nothing for me but plenty of people swear by it.

The sachets are worth persisting with, I think — you can make them up weaker than the packet says and take it from a teaspoon rather than a glass. That got me through a bad week in the summer when nothing else would stay put.

Also cold, not room temperature, for me. Straight from the fridge. Hope you feel better soon.

Rural nurse, and I am going to back Tomás up in the strongest terms I have got.

Tressa, ring them back. The words that matter are I am unable to keep fluids down and I have not passed urine since yesterday. That sentence changes how the call is triaged. The reason you got Thursday is almost certainly that this morning you described being sick, and being sick is very common, and the person on the phone had no way of knowing about the water or the standing up.

It is not pushing. It is giving them the information they need to do their job.

Northumberland hills, big dog, small appetite. I ended up on a drip in July for what started exactly like this — three days, could not hold water, felt daft going in.

Two bags of fluid, kept overnight, bloods showed my potassium had dropped. I was walking the dog again by the weekend. The whole thing took less time than the four days I spent at home deciding whether to go.

Seville. The not-wanting-to-make-a-fuss on the phone is the part I recognise most, and I think it is worth separating from everything else.

You did ring. You told them the truth as you understood it. The system gave you Thursday. That is not a verdict on how ill you are — it is what happens when a queue meets an incomplete sentence.

Writing this from a chair in the urgent care unit at ten past nine. Rang back at half four, said the four things in the order Mairéad wrote them, and the receptionist put me through to a nurse within about two minutes and the nurse told me to come in.

Cannula in, second bag of fluid going through, bloods taken. They have said something about my potassium and are keeping me in tonight. The nurse said I had left it about a day too long, in the mild way they say things when they do not want to frighten you.

Tomás — thank you for stopping the thread. I would have had the lemonade and waited until Thursday. I know that for a fact because it is what I had already decided to do.