Tom Watkins

My Story.
By Tom Watkins

Approximately 36 years ago (1964), one Sunday morning I was out in the garden. My wife dressed our daughter in a woollen hat with a pompom and a jacket she had knitted, she put her outside the kitchen door and said go and see your dad.

As she toddled down the path, just able to walk, I could not resist picking her up and giving her a hug. Our daughter did not want this, her little arms flayed about and my spectacles went flying. I grabbed for the spectacles and dropped my daughter.

Her head hit a concrete path. Aghast at what I had done I carried her into our home. My wife examined her and said “I can’t find anything Tom”, sure enough, no signs of external injury whatsoever. Thank God (and my wife) for that hat. Absolutely relieved I sat down, my wife made a cup of coffee.

Still worried, around half an hour later I said, “I’m going to phone the doctor”, “do you think you need to” said my wife “you’ll disturb his lunch”. I was looking for reassurance. As a result of that call we ended up at a hospital, I remember the initial animosity, “what have you done, how did this happen”. An x-ray showed a fracture of the back of the skull.

I did not go to work during the following week, attending the hospital with my wife every minute they would allow us to do so. After approximately 8 days we were allowed to take our daughter home but only after a strict lecture. If our daughter was to bump her head again during the next 6 weeks, this could prove very dangerous, even fatal. Did we understand this. If there was any sign of abnormality, we were to definitely bring her back.

Fortunately for us my daughter recovered, she is now 37 years old (year 2000) and loved by me as much now, as then, I was so lucky. But what could have happened if we had not attended the hospital and my daughter had had another bump during those coming weeks. A haematoma would have formed, these days medical personal would have claimed the child had been shaken. If she had died, whoever was with the child would have been charged with murder.

My wife died in 1989. The first signs of trouble were around 18 months previous. She woke up one morning with a pain in the leg. The doctor said this was sciatica and proscribed pain killers. Even after a lump was found in her breast which was diagnosed as cancer, doctors and the consultant continued to insist the pain in the leg was sciatica.

They operated to remove the lump, gave her pills and said she would now be alright, people survive cancer these days and yes, you’ve guessed it, the pain in the leg was definitely sciatica.

Eventually the pain got so bad she was taken by ambulance to The Queen Elizabeth Hospital at Birmingham. It took just 3 days for another consultant to tell her she had a tumour on the pelvis, she died 10 days later.

Doctors are not perfect, I recognise most do their best. If some of them were aeronautical engineers though, there would be a lot more plane crashes.