Start with a phone call. Your doctor’s office has a triage line and a nurse will talk it through with you. They are genuinely good at this, they do it all day, and it costs nothing. Most practices have a phone line where a nurse takes calls about whether something needs to be seen, and how soon. It is often not advertised — you ring the main number and ask to speak to the triage nurse. There is no charge and you do not need an appointment to use it.
If it feels more serious than that, go to urgent care. You will usually be seen faster than at a hospital, and the care is good.
If it feels life-threatening, call 911 or go to the emergency room. Do not wait until you are sure.
Which one is yours to decide, not ours. But our advice is to assume it is worse than it looks and take the more cautious road. And trust your body — if it is telling you something is wrong, it is probably right. The best possible outcome of a trip to the emergency room is walking out saying well, that was a waste of an evening — but I feel a lot better knowing it is nothing serious.
Before you call, have these ready. They are what the nurse will ask, and the call goes better when you are not working them out on the phone.
You are not diagnosing yourself by having this ready. You are handing them the things they would otherwise spend the call extracting — and the decision stays entirely theirs.
Writing to the portal instead of calling? The same list works, in that order, in one message. Put the direction it is going and the immune-system line near the top — portal messages get read quickly, and those two change how the rest is read.
Beta. This site is real work with its sources shown, and it is not finished. If something here is wrong, the box at the foot of the page reaches a person. Nothing here is a diagnosis.
Write it here if you’re more comfortable, or upload something you wrote in Word. Your choice, whatever you are most comfortable with — and you can change at any time.
Two ways to talk instead of type. They are not the same, and the difference is who hears you.
1. Your own computer's dictation — private. The words never leave this machine.
Windows: press Windows + H, then talk. Mac: press fn twice. Phone: the microphone on your keyboard. Click into the box below first, so the words land there.
2. This page listens — easier, but not private. Your browser sends the audio to the company that made it (Google, if this is Chrome) to turn it into words. We never see or keep it, but we cannot promise what we do not control.
Talking is not a shortcut. Typing is slower than thinking, so the thought waits — and while it waits you tidy it, and the part that wandered was the part that mattered.
Have lab results in front of you and would rather start there? Go straight to entering them.
Last updated . When we get something wrong we correct it and say what changed.