So last night, we got a trip in an ambulance. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be.

For the last few days, my 17-month old daughter hasn’t been well. That’s nothing new. She’s in her first winter at nursery, which any parent knows is a stewpot of bugs and colds and ick. She comes down with some sort of snot-related symptom every three to four weeks, and there’s a coin toss on whether my husband and I will get to share the joy. Yay.

She was unwell Sunday through ’til Tuesday, when she seemed to perk up massively in the evening. But on Wednesday she wasn’t herself again. She refused breakfast, didn’t have much to drink, and was a lot more teary than usual. As I was also unwell, having her bug on top of a longer-term infection, we sent her to nursery anyway so I could get come rest, but at lunchtime she got sent home with a raging fever. I gave her calpol and cuddles, and she spent the afternoon in disturbed, sweaty sleep.

At four I decided we needed help. Her eyes were unfocused, she was shivering, her heart was racing. Her temperature was 38 Celsius under the arm, and I found a rash on her torso. It was the rash that did it. What with the news full of the sad story of the boy who died from undiagnosed sepsis, my mind jumped to the worst. I burst into tears, and dialled 111 while cradling my daughter, who by now was very quiet and feeling like a bundle of hot coals.

The operator was a man called John (I have no idea why I remember that). He was very nice, and took me through a series of questions. Remembering the recent reports in the news, I made sure to leave nothing out, even if his questions didn’t cover everything. In the end he said he needed to speak to his colleague, and put me on hold. Those were a long couple of minutes.

John came back on the line and told me an ambulance was on its way. In the meantime I shouldn’t give my daughter anything to eat or drink, or medicine, and keep her sitting upright to help breathing. Don’t let her get cold, but don’t let her overheat. Get a bag together in case we needed to get to hospital.

My husband left work immediately. When he got home we stood as a family, huddled around our baby, who was shivering under her blanket.

Thanks to Southampton’s abysmal layout and traffic systems, the ambulance arrived almost half an hour after the call. Inside were two lovely gentlemen (I realise now that I never got their names, and I feel rather awful about it). They asked several questions and examined my daughter. They gave her calpol and nurofen, and told me we’d be going to hospital. Her temperature was now 40.1, and she was in danger of some kind of seizure. I didn’t really understand.

My husband met us at a&e a short while later, and two hours after that we left the hospital. The rash was due to the fever, and our daughter had improved massively by the time we got to the children’s ward. She was eating, drinking, walking around and smiling; something I hadn’t seen all day. We spoke to the nurses and asked to self-discharge. It seemed silly to waste our time and valuable NHS time when there was no immediate problem anymore. The nurses agreed, and made us promise to take her to the doctors if the fever returned, as it may be due to an infection. We went home and slept.

Here is where the choice comes in. I could be angry. I could be embarrassed at the fuss I caused, and point the finger at John at 111 and his script, for blowing things out of proportion when all we needed was a little over the counter medicine. We wasted an entire evening, brought a ton of unneeded stress, and spent hundreds of pounds of taxpayers money for no reason. We were just silly, overreacting parents.

Or were we? The other choice is this. Our daughter wasn’t herself. We know her better than anyone else. What if she had a seizure due to the heat? What if the rash was something more serious? Better safe than sorry comes to mind, and that’s what every NHS staff member told us. We did what we had to do.

Our attitude to the health system is a choice, like our attitude to anything is a choice. Are there cracks? Mistakes? Improvements to be made? Of course there are. Staff are underpaid, resources are stretched, demand is high. But under that is a backbone of steel and smiles. When we were in the a&e ward, I looked around and realised I loved every single person there. I loved the ambulance crews, transferring patients to beds and asking them if they wanted another pillow. The nurses, running from bed to bed, putting calls out on the phones, doing observations with a smile even though the beds were queuing out the door. The doctors, offering treatment and transferring patients to necessary specialist units. Even the policemen who hovered around at the end of the ward. Had they been at a car accident? Had someone been stabbed? Whatever it was, for whatever reason, they stayed.

At the end of the day, the public service staff are there to work. But how many of them had families at home at that moment, eating dinner? Wouldn’t they rather be there with them? I think the answer is probably yes, but that’s the sacrifice they make.

Be angry with the system. Be angry with the politicians. But never be angry at the staff. You don’t know what’s going on behind that smile. You don’t know how many trivial or serious cases they’ve seen today.

This is the reason I choose the second option. I choose to be grateful for John, who did his job and got a second opinion before giving us advice. I choose to be grateful for the ambulance crew and hospital staff, who used their own knowledge, experience and time to assess the urgency of our need while juggling a dozen others. And I choose it for us, me and my husband, for doing what any loving parents would have done.

When you’re unwell and having to wait days for an appointment, you have a choice. Which will you choose?