Speak up and thank goodness for the NHS.

Nick has been helping out now and again on a couple of Robert’s sites, predominantly lifting & shifting or concreting.

He had done a day’s concreting and returned home hobbling and when he took his sock off I nearly died, as did he, because who knew if you get wet cement in your boot and on your skin, it burns! Furthermore, if you fail to change your sock/boot for several hours it burns a lot. I tried to persuade him that a quick run to A&E might not be a bad idea, but the men in the house thought it unnecessary worrying on my part. I think they might have been influenced by the fact that we were due to host a picnic for some friends the following day, to celebrate Henley Royal Regatta, despite it not being on.

The next morning it was no better and to the untrained eye, mine, looked worse. He still refused to consider A&E and in fact continue in that manner until one of our guests, a physiotherapist, arrived and said in no uncertain terms he should get to A&E immediately (thank you Jo). So I drove him to the John Radcliffe A&E (not a word of “I told you so” I promise) and when he arrived home several hours later, he had an appointment at the Burns Unit of Stoke Mandeville at 8.30am the following day.

To cut a long story short they were worried he might lose the use of a toe or two and would definitely need a skin graft. The upshot, as a result of being bumped down the operating list two days running by emergency burns cases, was that he started to heal so quickly they decided against the skin graft and now, 5 weeks on, he is nearly back to normal. Another few weeks and he thinks he’ll be back rugby training.

So the moral of this story is if you get cement in your wellie, ask if you can stop and change it, do not ignore it.

P.S. Thank you NHS for the wonderful treatment.