I was taken to Charing Cross Hospital when I broke my right leg playing football in Kensington Gardens in November 2008. It could just as well have been St Mary's but the paramedics reckoned the traffic would be better to Charing Cross.
I was still wearing my football kit, my shirt emblazoned with our sponsor QuizQuizQuiz. I had lots of nitrous oxide, to the extent I hardly noticed them setting the bone back in line, just some vague distant idea of pain.
It was on a Saturday. The operation was on the Monday. It went fine. I'd made the hospital aware of the clot I'd had in my (unbroken) left leg in 2007 and the fact I'd been diagnosed with Protein C deficiency but was not currently on anti-coagulants, so I was given clexane alongside other pain medication.
I left the hospital on, I think, Friday. It was only when I got home that I realised I hadn't been prescribed enough clexane. Tbh, at this remove, I'm not 100% sure what that means. It feels like I should have been able to get hold of more if needed, but, to be fair, I'd just broken my leg so was not capable of being on top of my affairs. Either way, I was without anti-coagulant for a few days at a crucial point, that I'm sure of.
I had a follow-up appointment about a month later at Charing Cross. Some hospital appointments are pretty exact timewise but sometime's it's a clinic and you basically have to accept sitting around for a couple of hours before being, seemingly randomly, called.
I saw the consultant, who was brisk but pleasant. I told him I was pretty certain I had a clot in my right leg. He said no, you've been on anti-coagulants. and I can't see any sign of it. But I knew there was one there. I knew what they felt like now. So I persuaded him to send me up to be checked.
He told me where to hobble on my crutches. It was quite late in the day now - someone told me to sit and wait. I waited and waited. Nothing.
Wait, this is a nice story, I promise. A man walked past on his way home. He caught sight of me, hesitated, stopped. "Are you waiting to be seen?" "Yeah". He kind of rolled his eyes. "Sorry ... wait one second. Ok. let's do it. let's go through here"
I explained I'd had a clot before in my other leg, I said the first time they'd looked for one, they'd not found it and I'd been definitively told "it's not a clot" only for the pain to increase over the next couple of weeks as the clot went further and further up my leg.
"Yeah", he said, "often people don't really check below the knee, because it's deemed that it's only when they're above the knee that they're dangerous. Don't worry, I'll have a really good check".
I should say at this point my mindset was that I'd dealt with the broken leg with relative equanimity, but I saw the possibility of another clot as a crushing blow - it would mean, at that point, I'd never be able to play football again, would be on unstable rat poison medication for the rest of my life, would have to permanently watch my eating and drinking, and, most importantly, meant I was living with and susceptible to, a life-threating condition, despite being only 30.
Anyway, he found one, just below the knee. Not a massive one, but a definite clot. Then he sat and explained to me everything to do wih how blood clots work and a rational view of what my lifestyle could be going forward.
It's a cliche, but, those occasions when someone does more than their job's worth are the times that stay with you. I don't even know if he was a doctor, a sonographer, whatever. He seemed like he knew everything. I can't remember his name.
Anyway, I'm sure I felt pretty bummed out as I hopped out of the hospital onto Fulham Palace Road. I remember standing on the corner outside the hospital before catching the bus home, calling my mum, telling her it was a clot, hearing her heart sink, and, absolutely in that moment, my brain going "actually, this is completely fine" and it was.
I can't say I've always been completely phlegmatic in moments like that. It's funny how sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't. But that time I was.
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