Yet another of those sentences I could never imagine myself writing, up there with ‘Why you should join a gym’ or ‘Buy fewer shoes’, although if my poorly leg doesn’t improve soon I may request amputation and have an awful lot of right, size 39 footwear to sell.

I went to bed the other night with a slightly sore leg; the sort of pain that you might get after walking a great distance, obviously something I have only ever read about in books. 2 paracetamols and think no more about it.

As I attempted to descend the stairs next morning to get some coffee the pain had become so excruciating that sweat began running down my face and I had to sit down before I vomited and no, it wasn’t a hangover. Something definitely not quite right.

Consultation with highly qualified chums (retired) resulted in the universally agreed view, a first with the medical profession, that I should ‘get it looked at’.  Part one of your re-vamped A Level maths paper is to work out the chances of that happening and part two is to estimate the prospect of getting an appointment within 6-12 months. (Show your working).  So, so wrong students.  There was an appointment that very morning!

It was with a locum who never once raised her eyes from the computer screen and asked some very peculiar questions.  She advised me to take my temperature every two hours in case it was sepsis and to keep prodding the leg in case it went hard in which case it could be a blood clot.  So not just a spot of sciatica Doctor?  I left with several prescriptions and hobbled off to buy an accurate thermometer.  She rang later  – another staggering first for a Doctor in my experience – to say that she had made an appointment for me at the local hospital for the very next day.  Either this is a woman with a LOT of influence or I’m at death’s door.  I spent a sleepless night having opted for the latter.

A chum who is already beatified (Look it up) drove me to the hospital and before she had even parked the car I was whisked in to see a lovely young woman in rather fetching gold flip flops who looked flabbergasted when I mentioned the life threatening options and said it was clearly a pulled muscle.  She even examined the offending limb.  Not having met me before she was further puzzled by my astonishment that pulling a muscle was even a remote possibility.  I left with five more prescriptions and a slightly longer life expectancy than the day before.

Now for the advanced sums.  Two of the tablets have to be taken once a day.  The next one is twice a day.  Number four is 1 tablet three times a day and the last one is two tablets to be taken four times a day.  This one with meals.  Got that?  Now draw a Venn diagram.  Being a woman of widely acknowledged wisdom I made her put this down on paper before I left so at least one of us knew what was going on, once you could make out the writing.  And absolutely no alcohol.

Finally estimate the chances, to three decimal points, of anyone getting the medications correctly administered before they are killed by an unholy cocktail of drugs mixed with confusion, temperance and despair.  I bet you wish you’d paid more attention at school, as belatedly do I, but on the plus side the pass mark nowadays is only 10%.  Consider swopping to drama studies and send flowers to the usual address.