Chest infection - MUST I get antibiotics?

[webwanderer]

I have had a bad bout of 'flu, from which I am at last starting to recover, but still have a wheezy chest with a bad cough, and very congested "tubes".

I have been unable to get to the doctor, due to feeling too weak to drive myself there, and was hoping that if I persevere with Beechams etc. it will clear up eventually.

I don't even know if what I have had is the sort of thing that anti-b's would be prescribed for, but what I'm really asking is, in a situation where they would be, does the infection go away eventually if nature is left to take its course? What happened in the old days before anti-b's were invented? Did people just die if they got 'flu?

I really don't want another week of this, and will have to get to a GP somehow, if I am just kidding myself that I don't need prescribed treatment.

[crete]

you need to get off the keyboard and seek medical attention, there are no doctors available on this site for advice,

[redcrx]

If it is a chest infection then anti-bs and maybe steriods would be prescribed.

Is there anyone who could take you to your GP or can you call them out?

[redcrx]

and just to maybe give you the motivation to get an appointment my mother in law had heart failure after not wanting to worry anyone when she got a cold, then a chest infection, then pneumonia and blood poisoning. We are very lucky that she finally thought to phone her daughter when she couldnt breathe. The ambulance got there just in time.
As crete says, no-one can diagnose as well as your GP or hospital, please get assistance and I hope you feel better soon

[wendilla]

I would get to a doctor as it could lead to something else.I had it 3 weeks ago and should have gone Dr sooner as it lead to a chest infection but on 3rd day of antbiotics started to feel better but I dont want to go through that again I couldn't drive myself there had to get my daughter to take me.

[alijangra]

If you are genuinely unable to get to your GP they will have to do a home visit. There is absolutely no point putting it off and you could become very unwell and require hospital treatment. I rarely take antibiotics myself, and didnt for the chest infection I had over xmas but as a qualified nurse I feel I can assess my symptoms pretty well. Someone with no medical training should not try and self-diagnose. Phone up and insist on a home visit if you really cannot get yourself to the surgery.

[joko]

flu is a virus, so antibiots will be useless.

unless you actually have mucus in your chest and a proper bacterial infection, then you don' t need them.

are you coughing up phlegm and can hear the rattling gloop in your chest?

sod driving, just get a taxi to the docs - they will call one for you to bring you home too.

i can't be that expensive and worth it to get you better

[webwanderer]

Thank you everybody for the quick responses. I'm especially indebted to those of you with horror stories (no, really) of the risks of not doing the right thing.

To the first respondent, I wasn't really asking for medical advice pertinent to my particular situation, because that would be pointless without an examination. I just wondered about the alternatives to automatically heading for the doc, and the likely outcomes of them.

If you look up colds, 'flu, infections etc. in a medical book, they don't tend to say that visiting the GP is essential. In a ''flu epidemic it seems to be the elderly and very young who are most at risk of serious complications, while the majority of us are advised to treat ourselves at home, and keep an eye out for possible problems when a doctor would become necessary.

I still want to know what happened before antibiotics were invented. Leeches perhaps?