Ye gods, you wonder what some GPs are thinking of. Mind you, hospitals sometimes aren't much better. About 3 years ago my mum, then 81, got taken in to A&E in the middle of the night feeling very poorly. Admittedly she's been on pills for things like high blood pressure for longer than I can remember, so a diagnosis might not have been easy, but I was astonished (and furious) that she was sent home two and a half days later without any real determination of what was wrong with her - which itself caused her to worry and make herself feel worse. Two months later she was back in hospital for a fortnight over Christmas/New Year, and they finally diagnosed two leaking heart valves! Three years later she's still around, although consuming a small pharmacy's worth of pills each day, and an oxygen bottle a week - back then I wasn't too hopeful she'd still be around in three months. It's surprising what little secrets a family can conceal - I was around after this when mum was giving the district nurse her lifetime medical history, and it wasn't until then that I discovered that I was born by Caesarian - I'd wondered why of four births I was the only one not born at home, but back in the 1950s Caesarians were still quite rare...