Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

This morning, I woke up with pains in my chest – and it’s not the first time. I had similar pains a couple of months ago.

Now, I’m English, so I don’t like to make fuss. (To be fair, I’m also a bloke and we do get very bad influenza.) Nevertheless, when it comes to aches and pains, I tend to ignore them. True, I may wince a little and grumble a bit, but I’m certainly not popping in to see my GP every five minutes. I’d much rather moan about it.

Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks, the pain wasn’t noticeably better. It wasn’t debilitating – more of a nuisance, really – but its persistence was worrying. Reluctantly, I booked in at the doctor’s.

Of course, these days, you’re either an emergency and get in the same day, or you have to wait a week. I didn’t know whether…