You never know

We were going to a drinks get-together to mark a friend's retirement after thirty-odd years with the company he worked for. I arranged to meet Carl at 6.30 out in Dún Laoghaire when he finished work, and got the bus in to town to stop off to but a greeting card and then get the DART out. I got off the bus in Marlborough Street and went to cross the street to walk along Sackville Place to Easons on O'Connell Street, when -- WHAM!, out of the blue, a bicycle courier (as in pushbike, not motorbike), coming the wrong way along this one-way street, ran straight into me as I came out from behind the parked bus. I went flying, put out my arm to save myself, and knew as soon as I got up that I'd done serious damage to my right wrist.

A passing pedestrian came to my aid and helped me to steps where I sat down to calm away the shock and take stock of the situation while the young courier (Polish, almost as shocked as I was) contacted the courier company and got them to send an ambulance. I was whisked off to the Mater, thinking all the while that I was in for a long wait on a chair or a trolly before anyone would see me. The reality couldn't have been different. It took from 5.15 to 11.30, but during that time I was attended to with unfailing courtesy and efficiency, plied with tea and sandwiches, and seen by an apparently non-stop stream of nurses and orthopedic staff. What had originally been described by the ambulance attendant as 'a classic Colles fracture' was diagnosed as more serious as time went by, and x-rays before and after preliminary manipulation and fitting of a temporary half-cast (thankfully under sedation) the experts agreed that surgery would be needed to insert pins to aid repair.

I was transferred to the Acute Surgical Unit at 11.30, was given more tea and toast (there was a feeling of the condemned man's final meal about this) and then the dreaded sign went up over my bed to the effect that I was forbidden food and drink until surgery the next day. I think I was still a bit high on morphine and whatever sedative I'd been pumped with, because I was soon asleep.