Anything And Everything

It's all been rather dramatic here of late. Happily Indian summer has come to bless us with late glorious sunshine. It's actually hot!! So, L was out in her sandals doing a spot of weeding on Tuesday, and I was reading Winnicott's Playing and Reality. L went out the front, to weed the sort of earthy verge in front of our fence, where wallflowers and nasturtiums grow, and earlier in the year she planted some stocks and petunias. She had pulled out two enormous thistles and thrown them over the fence into the garden, one of them showering me with a light drizzle of earth, when suddenly she gave a loud shriek, and came hurrying round the corner and towards the kitchen door. 'What? what's happened' I asked, pursuing her. 'A huge rock just fell on my foot' she gasped, running cold water, desperate to plunge her foot into it. I ran her a bowl of water and added ice, got her a chair, and she sat in agony, foot in the iced water, rubbing her leg and rocking for a time. Then we transferred her to the sofa so she could put the foot up. Her big toe looked bruised and bumpy, and it seemed clear (especially when I'd been and viewed the rock in question, and unable to lift it, had just shunted it out of the way of anyone walking along the pavement) that there was a very real possibility it might be broken. She dipped it in and out of the iced water, as the first excruciating pain gradually receded, while I tried to find out where we ought to go. A&E or the new health centre in the next town, with a walk-in service? I phoned our local surgery and was most helpfully told that yes, the health centre did indeed have x-ray facilities. Great. 15 minutes' drive instead of half an hour. However, when we got there, we were told that they only have x-ray facilities of the kind you have to be referred to by your GP... So then it was 15 minutes back to our town, and then half an hour to A&E in Halifax. Where we were greeted by a sign informing us the waiting time was 'up to 4 hours to see a doctor'. There were also signs admonshing us to be certain that we really were an emergency - 'A&E doesn't mean Anything and Everything'. We were there 3 and a half hours, waiting for triage, waiting for x-ray, then waiting for the doctor... getting home around 9.30, hungry and exhausted. I will say though, that apart from the under-resourcedness leading to the up to 4-hour waiting time, everything was well-managed in A&E and staff were courteous and helpful and gave every impression of working hard to meet everyone's needs as quickly as they could.

So poor L's toe is fractured in two places. It is black and blue now, and blistered too. She's cut a section out of a pair of cheap sub-Croc plastic shoes she bought for the beach, and can hobble about in these, though she tries to keep the foot up most of the time. She has an appointment at the fracture clinic on Monday, though I don't think there's much more they'll do. Toe fractures seem to be mostly about 'letting nature take its course'. The A&E doctor strapped the toe to its neighbour, just to give it 'stability', and we bought more strapping, but it's not easy to strap the toe now it is so blistered. Happily it is not so painful now, and she slept better last night... I have cancelled a vist to my Mum this weekend, and she feels terribly disappointed. Torn between two people who need me, this time I've had to choose L. Not an easy decision though. But I feel better now I've made it.