Good Evening, You Are Through To The Out Of Hours Emergency GP Line.

Health, I admit, is a thing which I've never paid much attention to. Of course there are those who stick to well-balanced diets, go to the gym, swim, force themselves to sleep at least 8 hours a night and don't acquire the unhealthy habits so many teenagers do. However, I have been fundamentally reckless with my health my entire life, and it isn't at all surprising that its not fantastic, considering the amount of toxic substances I subject it to. It has always been quite clear that drinking half a litre of Sainsburies value vodka, which tastes like window cleaner and disintegrates my stomach, can't be great. I eat bacon, fried to a crisp almost every other day - just to make my arteries happy and often sit and ponder about the last time I actually devoured a piece of fruit. Normally, I eat nothing (simply because I have no time) or complete shit. Then ofcourse, I have total disregard for sleep, seeing it as more of a luxury than a necessity nowadays. After my brief lapse of laziness a few months back, I returned to the loathing of all exercise, and do not remember what the very feel of a tennis racket or a football are like. The liver hates me for drinking, the lungs loathe me for smoking, the heart despises me for by atrocious diet and my brain is disgusted at how I consciously make a decision to lead such a lifestyle.

Now this week I am performing in a play, the last show being on Saturday night and on Sunday morning I am flying to Spain with my brilliant man-friend Jamie Rogers, who I have known for absolutely years and with whom I've been through hell and back. Even as I think of all the cocktails and shots I plan to order on some sunny beach in Resort Calella, I can hear my liver sobbing salty tears of dread.

Now if perchance, some one really is reading this, whether you are male or female it is worth knowing what the devilish, vicious Cystitis is. If you're a girl, then 4 out 5 of us will get it at least twice in our lives - and when you do, boy you'll know about it. If you're a guy - you got lucky, about 1 out of a billion get it. Now what is this plague? Stinging, burning, stabbing pains in the stomach and the back. Feeling hot, sick and uncomfortable and yes - it fucking hurts to pee.

Cystitis is common, well-known and treatable but when it decides to attack you at about 11pm on a Wednesday night, when already - You're exhausted, sleepy and a little agitated, a happy bunny I am not. Now the main thing about it is other than it hurting to pee like hell, you feel like you need the loo literally ALL the time and as if your tummy is about to explode.

So, on my one night off from work, rehearsals and shows, I spent about four hours sat on the loo, flicking through Too Posh To Wash by Kim and Aggie (yes, the women off How Clean Is Your House) in an attempt to distract myself from the pain. At about 1am I was on "How To Have Heavenly Pits," (who knew that there was so much philosophy in armpit care?) and the pain was just bearable. But by 2am, when I had reached the chapter on the Mastering of Washing Nappies the throbbing was excruciating and wait... wait... yeah, I was bleeding. Not really supposed to happen.

I glugged herbal teas, and tablets, and powders - but still, I was hobbling round the flat in pain, grasping Kim and Aggie to my chest. Eventually mum told me to call a doctor.

Now the NHS is a moderately successful health system in my opinion. However, when one is sat on the phone at half 2 in the morning, on the verge of slicing open one's torso and ripping all the organs out, the favourable situation is not calling one number, to get another number, to get another and then get through to a doctor who says he will call you back and takes an age to do so.

In the end, mother drove me to Bournemouth hospital at 3am where the doctor insisted I... take a urine sample. Now, the majority of us, at some point in life, have done a urine sample and therefore understand the awkwardnesses it presents. Firstly, they are tiny little pots, and this especially applies to girls, WHAT IF YOU MISS? And then, if you do miss, because afterall with the location of women's bits isn't hard to, you... pee all over your hands!! EW EW EW. Not only the hands though, the pot too, which in the very close and foreseeable future you will be handing to some poor, ungloved, unsuspecting doctor. Then there is the matter of how much pee is needed - have I peed too little, have I peed too much - HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT? Or the unlucky sods that start peeing and just can't stop? And following that, the constant worry of how normal one's pee is - is it the right colour? Too dark? Too light?

But lastly of course, is the horrible and shameful walk from the toilets to the doctors office, clutching the Pee pot like the Holy Grail of Jesus and trying not to slip, falling flat on your face and causing your urine to splash all over the entire hospital or into some receptionists face.

Peeing, my friends, can be a traumatising experience.

So its about 3:15 in the morning, I come into the Dr's office and plonk down my urine on the desk. The Doctor opens the pot right there and then, gets out a little white stick and pops it into the pot, meanwhile telling me that my name sounds very Russian. Wishing to God that he would hurry up and do something I tell him that that, just might be because I am Russian.

Who knew? This guy was from Ukraine, spoke Russian fluently and went off on one about his home town back in Ukraine. Only me, this would only. Happen. To me.

So after finding from the results on the little white Pee stick that I was unwell (SHOCK. HORROR.) he felt my lower stomach, measured my temperature and concluded that I need anti-biotics. When I got home at almost four I was still in too much pain to sleep.

What did I do? Made a fried egg with salami, a cuppa tea and sat down to watch The Importance of Being Earnest, until the pain wore away by around half 5.

What have I learnt? Re-usable nappies don't need to be ironed. The herbal tea, so interestingly called Folia Uvae Ursi tastes like donkeys bollocks. Harkov is a very nice town in Ukraine. There is a landing spot for helicopters in Bournemouth hospital (I accidentally stumbled right across it.) And Judy Dench wears the most extravagant costumes in this particular Oscar Wilde interpretation.

P.S. The picture IS NOT ME!!