Time has disappeared into memory and memory has blurred into a grotesque fog of pain.
She remembers her appointment at the Rheumatology department at Chapel Allerton Hospital.
She remembers that it had been changed from the 12th to the 2nd of December 2016 ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’.
She remembers the pain of it all, the getting ready, the going, feeling deep down that this pain was more than just the broken foot but whatever had been causing the swelling – now both legs but before mainly her left. She had been referred to rheumatology because of that, not the break; the break which had not been noticed, for six weeks or so since 8.10.16, walked upon without x-ray because she had been told that she was ‘not really in pain…believe me there is no pain…’
You may say she should have gone to A & E anyway. But she did not. She was told: no break no pain.
She knew that she was is in pain, so why did she not question the other? When she found herself again on the floor, the food she had prepared all around her, rocking backwards and forwards as she cried: this does not hurt, this does not hurt, it is all in my imagination – But it does hurt!
Maybe adrenalin had kicked in, she had walked on it after all, the paramedic had encouraged her to walk on her heels, she had managed to drag herself to the stair lift then down into the kitchen holding onto the wall.
He had said, ‘call 999 if it gets worse’, but how could she when already the pain was bad enough and he had said there was no break and the pain was ‘psychological’.
How could she when in the calling she may be taking an ambulance that someone else might really need? So she did not.
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