“How Long Has the Temperature Been There?” – When You Have No Answer at the GP

The GP looks up from the screen. Your child is on your lap, tugging at your sleeve. "How long has the temperature been there?" You open your mouth — and there is nothing. Since Sunday? Or was Saturday evening already the first rise? You hear yourself guessing, and while you guess you think: I should know this.

This is not carelessness. This is the third night in a row on four hours of sleep. Why the question gets asked at all, what you can say when you genuinely no longer know, and how to walk in prepared next time — that is all directly below.

Why does the GP ask how long it has been going?

Because duration is a decision point in its own right. NHS advice is to contact 111 if your child has had a high temperature for 5 days or more, and a high temperature is 38C or above. So the answer moves the assessment along — it is not an exam question.

The shape of the illness matters too. The NHS notes that a temperature usually returns to normal within 1 to 4 days, so a fifth day is genuinely different from a second one. A curve that has been falling since yesterday tells a different story from one that spikes higher every evening, even if both read 38.9C this morning.

There is also the part that has nothing to do with medicine. The question arrives in the first thirty seconds. You have just got through the door with a coat, a child and an appointment time all at once, and you are expected to produce a precise date from a standing start. That this goes wrong says nothing about you.

Which questions actually come up in the room?

Roughly the same four or five every time. How long has the temperature been there. How high did it get. How is your child in themselves — feeding, drinking, alert or floppy. What else has appeared alongside it: rash, cough, vomiting, diarrhoea. And with a temperature, almost always: what have you given, how much, and how many hours ago.

The NHS puts the same thing on the preparation side of the appointment. Its guidance on getting ready to see a doctor asks you to write down details of your symptoms, including when they started and what makes them better or worse, and to list or bring all the medicines you use.

That is the whole list. Five or six questions, the same ones every time — and most of us still walk in unprepared, because at three in the morning nobody is thinking about a conversation the following day.

Babies under 3 months are a case of their own: a temperature of 38C or above in a baby that young needs NHS 111 or your GP surgery straight away, even if nothing else looks wrong — and 999 only if they are seriously unwell.

What do you say when you genuinely do not know?

Say exactly that. "I'm not certain — roughly since Sunday evening" is a usable answer, because the thresholds that matter are counted in days, not in hours. An invented time is not a good answer, and it is worse than an honest gap: it sounds precise, and it is not.

When the day itself is missing, stop searching your memory and look for an anchor instead. Almost every day has a fixed point where you know how your child was:

• The last normal day at nursery or school — when did they call you, or when did you keep them home?
• The last night your child slept through
• The last meal they ate normally
• The day you first reached for the thermometer

The same trick works for medicines. When the time is gone, the packet is often a better source than your memory: how much is missing from the bottle, how many sachets are left in the box. And if you are unsure about a dose, that uncertainty belongs in the conversation — a surgery can work with it, but not with a wrong figure.

Why your mind refuses to cooperate at exactly that moment is a subject of its own: why your memory fails at the GP. The short version — it is biology, not a character flaw.

How do you walk in prepared next time?

By reading the answer rather than remembering it. The NHS puts it about as plainly as it can be put: write down when your symptoms started. The question "how long has it been there?" needs nothing more than that — and at half past three in the morning, nothing more is realistic anyway.

That is what Mona is built for. You enter the reading at night, two taps, and the temperature curve builds itself in the background. Every dose is timestamped as you record it, so "when did they last have what" stops being a reconstruction and becomes a line you can read out. The next morning you do not need to remember anything; you just turn the phone around.

Then the scene from the start looks different. "How long has the temperature been there?" — "Since Sunday evening, first reading 38.9 just before eight. Highest was 39.4 last night. Last ibuprofen at ten past six this morning." No guessing, no "I think", no two minutes of mental arithmetic while your child squirms on your lap.

A note on the bedside table can do this in theory. In practice it rarely survives the third night: by morning it is under the bed, or the one line that matters was written down by your partner on their side. The problem in the consulting room is never that nobody wrote anything down. It is that the note is not where it is needed.

What should you actually take to the appointment?

Two things, and one of them is already in a drawer. The NHS asks you to list or bring all the medicines and pills your child is taking, including vitamins and supplements. The second thing is the part most of us leave out: your own notes — the temperature readings with times, what you have given, and the questions you want to ask.

"Write down your 2 or 3 most important questions," the NHS says about preparing for an appointment. That cuts both ways. The appointment is not an interrogation in which you supply answers. It is a conversation you are allowed to walk into with two questions of your own — and those get forgotten in the waiting room just as reliably as the day the temperature started.

If you are not sure the appointment is needed at all, the warning signs above are the place to start, along with our article on when a temperature in a child is actually dangerous. And when the decision lands at night with nobody to share it with: your child's temperature rises and you are on your own.

Common questions about GP appointments and fever

Does it matter if I do not know exactly when the temperature started?

No. The thresholds for getting help are written in days — the NHS points to 5 days or more of a high temperature as a reason to contact 111. An answer like "roughly since Sunday evening" carries that decision. Say you are unsure rather than offering a time you have talked yourself into.

What should I actually write down at home?

The time of each reading and the number you measured. Alongside that, every dose with the time and the amount given. Everything else is optional: how much your child drank, how they slept, and whether a rash, vomiting or diarrhoea has appeared since the last entry you made.

How often should I take my child's temperature?

There is no fixed number. A rhythm that makes the trend visible without waking your child constantly works well — morning, afternoon, evening, plus any time their condition noticeably changes. How your child is in themselves matters more than the reading on the thermometer.

Is it enough to read the numbers off my phone?

Yes. The format is not the point; the information is — how long, how high, and when they last had what. Whether you read that from a phone, a notebook or from memory makes no difference, as long as the figures are right and you are not reconstructing them on the spot.

What if someone else was looking after my child in between?

Ask for the time and the amount specifically, on the same day, before the memory fades. Handovers are exactly where the gaps appear that nobody can fill in later. Our handover checklist for grandparents and babysitters covers how to solve this properly.

How many infections a year is normal anyway?

More than most parents expect. Children have 5 to 8 colds a year on average, and most colds in younger children get better within 2 weeks. A run of illnesses through the winter is not in itself a sign that something is being missed — but it is exactly why a written record beats memory by February.

What if I simply forgot to write anything down?

Then you say so, and the appointment goes ahead anyway. Surgeries work with incomplete accounts every day, and the examination itself is a second, independent source of information. Your notes make the appointment more accurate and shorter — they are not a condition of being helped.

Summary: what do you do when you have no answer?

Situation	What to do
Any 999 sign above — stiff neck, non-fading rash, difficulty breathing, hard to wake	Call 999 or go to A&E — notes come second
Under 3 months with a temperature of 38C or above	NHS 111 or your GP surgery straight away — 999 only if seriously unwell
3–6 months with 39C, or a high temperature for 5 days or more	Contact 111 or your GP surgery today
You do not know when the temperature started	Say "roughly since …" and use an anchor: last nursery day, last normal meal
You are unsure about a dose you gave	Raise the uncertainty, use the packet as a guide — never invent a time
Your child is ill and no appointment is booked yet	Record readings with times and let the trend build in Mona