"NHS is truly priceless"

I came into UHCW A&E with a badly fractured left ankle on Fri 3rd Apr. The foot was just flapping around. The A&E guys gave me a couple of shots of morphine before wrenching the dislocated ankle straight, then put a temp plaster on the leg and sent me up to Ward 52.

A young consultant came to explain that they were intending to operate on me the following morning. The operation was about 3 hours long using a spinal anaesthetic. I was awake, and when they projected the X-ray display on the back wall I could see that they had a metal plate down the outside of the leg, and were drilling through the bone and putting screws through to the metal plate to fix the broken bits together. The anaesthetist gave me a simplified running commentary on what was going on. The surgeons ended up putting a surgical boot over the foot and lower leg to hold everything securely.

In the evening after the operation, a physio team came to give me practice at using a walking frame, taking care not to put weight on the left leg. The first couple of steps were quite tricky, but I succeeded in going to the loo and washing my hands at the hand-basin without mishap.

I stayed a second night Sat 4th-Sun 5th Apr in Ward 52, looked after by the extremely helpful and friendly nurses and auxiliary staff. I give them 10 out of 10 on every point.

On Sun I had another visit by the physio guys who gave me a short course on walking on crutches. I had a couple of visits by the doctors and the nurses to explain the conditions of my discharge and what I had to do next.

The whole experience was wonderfully positive, and I have already told everyone I have met (online only) that the NHS is truly priceless. The guys in UHCW Ward 52 were an absolute delight.

About 10 years ago I had a much more minor operation in a good quality US hospital, and had to pay a few hundred dollars for every small item - a shoulder splint from A&E 70 bucks, hospital non-slip socks 70 bucks etc. (eventually I got my occupational insurance company in on the act). Quite apart from the money paid in advance (taking 3 blood samples, sending them to 3 different laboratoris for analysis, each paid separately), the time and worry about dealing with many dozens of small but expensive items was totally maddening.