It’s six years since I wrote in The Spectator about my broken right ankle, humiliatingly sustained when I slipped while arguing with a swimming-pool attendant in a French ski resort. The joke among British patients in the hospital in Grenoble, all of them with much worse injuries than mine, was that it was better to stay where we were, where staff knew about broken bones and where there was a comfortable hostel for patients’ relatives, rather than return to the bosom of the NHS where we might catch MRSA.
Well, now I’ve broken my left ankle and this time I had no choice. My motor scooter skidded on slippery cobbles outside the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton and crushed my foot. No one else was involved. Indeed, passers-by were extremely helpful. One man picked me up, while another put the bike back on its stand and they each offered to call an ambulance, or to accompany me to hospital. I eventually persuaded them I was perfectly all right by hopping back on the bike, still shaking a bit, and going home, where it was my wife who said I really did need hospital treatment and took me to King’s College Hospital in Camberwell.
My foot was by now increasingly painful and swollen and, after about an hour’s wait at A&E, a doctor said it was probably sprained but I ought to have an X-ray. The X-ray operative told me she was not allowed to disclose what she could see on her machine but that I’d have to wait for a doctor’s analysis. Then there was another hour’s wait before a doctor appeared. He asked about other problems I had had, medication for asthma, operations for cancer, that sort of thing, before telling me I had sprained my ankle. I told him I knew I hadn’t twisted my foot, only squashed it between the bike and the cobbles, and I knew what a bone injury felt like as a result of the previous episode. But had he looked at the X-ray? No, he hadn’t, but he promised to do so and, after disappearing for a while, he came back to confirm that I had sprained my ankle. From my prone position I was unable to see what his name was.
On the way home I apologised to my wife for wasting everyone’s time but said it was just as well we’d gone to the hospital because I would otherwise have been convinced that I had broken it. But as the days went by and the pain and swelling got worse, I became more convinced it was a fracture. After ten days I went to see my GP, the excellent Dr Sunanda Wickremesinghe, who came to England as a medical student from Ceylon but now rather wishes he had gone to America or Australia where the medical profession is in better health. After much painful probing Dr Wickers, as he is known to his patients in Stockwell, pronounced that I had cracked a bone and, with a fine fountain pen, wrote a two-page letter to King’s College Hospital requesting another X-ray.
Hospital staff were not too pleased to see me again when I turned up ten minutes later, as it was Christmas Eve. They dug up my records and pointed out that I had already had an X-ray and it indicated there was no injury to the bone. I suggested they should read Dr Wickers’s letter and telephone him if necessary, which they promised to do. But they’d need to do that quickly, I explained, because he was about to go home for the Christmas holiday. Reluctantly, a nurse rang him up and I heard her telling him he ought to have given me some painkillers. I couldn’t hear what the good doctor was saying on the other end of the line but I gather from secondary sources that his spectacles were steaming up as he spoke.
Whatever he said, it worked. A second X-ray was ordered and it revealed quite clearly — even I could see it — that there was a crack in the bone. The second doctor, Mr Hamilton, told me the crack was also visible in the first X-ray. So my leg was put in plaster and I was given crutches but no apologies were offered. These days they might be legally expensive, after all. Three days later I was provided with a magnificent plastic boot with inflatable air-cushioning, enabling me to walk without crutches. I would need to come back in a month.
Now, here follows the funny part. A letter arrived from the hospital asking whether I was suffering from trauma as a result of my motorcycle accident. ‘Accidents or assaults can be very upsetting experiences,’ wrote Inga Boellinghaus and Emma Briddon, research psychologists at King’s, inviting me to volunteer in their research study and offering me £60 in travel expenses. ‘Many people find it hard to come to terms with their accident/assault and develop long-lasting psychological distress.’ They were not offering treatment for my trauma, they emphasised, only inviting me to take part in their research study, which involved interviews over several weeks. This is what Brixton police often do, I have found, rather than chasing criminals.
I had to fill in a form, saying whether I would co-operate with their investigations. I said by all means, but it was a very minor incident and I had got over it. Then I received a telephone call, asking me to describe the stress I had endured. Surely I had some issues with the other parties involved in the incident. I said no, on the contrary, everyone at the scene outside the Ritzy had been extremely kind and generous with their sympathy and their time. I was quite overwhelmed by their concern. Then I recalled that the only aggravation I had experienced was at the hands of the doctor who told me I had not broken my ankle, only sprained it, having failed to look at my X-ray. I began to develop my theme, saying that I thought he was stupid, inexperienced and idle. There was a silence on the end of the line as I suggested this was something they might like to investigate. They said no, this was not their problem and that if I had any complaints, I should make them through the usual channels. Oh for that nice hospital in Grenoble. In the meantime, as I scooter around London, one or two admirers have said they like my fashionable plastic boots, not realising it’s a solitary boot on one foot only.