James Hughesonslow

It helps if the doctor actually looks at the X-ray

James Hughes-Onslow reports on the wretchedness of breaking an ankle and then having to persuade the man in A&E that his agony was caused by more than a sprain

issue 19 January 2008

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.

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