Thank you all for your kind replies.
Pain is a weird thing to discribe isn't it? The little foreign doc I saw first asked me 'what sort of pain you get?' - what do you say? - not burning, not aching, not stabbing, - err excruciating! Perhaps I should have made more fuss but we were brought up not to exaggerate weren't we.
As you say, in the 'old days' you had your own GP who knew you and took you seriously. I remember when my children were small (they are 48 and 46 now) and had measles, our GP just 'popped in' when he was passing to see how they were - that wouldn't happen now. You can't be ill after 5.30pm or at weekends nowadays.