10:41

Accidents will happen

George Kershaw had a hunting fall six months ago that left him a quadriplegic. From his hospital bed in Stoke Mandeville  he writes a great blog that is wry and funny. This is from his latest.

I remain interested in the nature of accidents which have caused patients to require rehab for their spinal cords here at Stoke Mandeville. It does appear that the road traffic accident is still the greatest danger, but man’s ingenuity still injects some variety. One gentleman was sitting down to watch a football match on his TV which was in some way important when he lost reception. Knowing that his aerial had been damaged by the wind he decided as an able DIY enthusiast to mend it himself. This involved climbing to the peak of his pitched roof. As his wife was always pestering him to make sure that he took all safety precautions possible, he decided to rig up a rope safety harness just in case the long ladder slipped. This consisted of a looped harness at one end for him and making sure that the other end (which he had thrown over the roof before he started up the ladder) had been securely fastened to a heavy object. He looked around for such an object and the perfect one seemed to be the towbar of an old Volvo of theirs. Having thus tied a perfect knot to the towbar, he returned to the ladder side, slipped the harness around his waist, and started slowly and carefully up the ladder. He was initially pleased to hear the faint noise of the Volvo diesel engine successfully starting as it had been playing up. This pleasure slowly turned to concern as a most unlikely possible train of events occurred to him. Sadly his concern turned out to be merited as his wife set off for the shops in the said Volvo. His ascent up the roof was considerably faster than he had anticipated and after a sharp whack from the aerial as he crested the top, his unintended dissent down the other side of the roof was yet more rapid, ending up in Stoke Mandeville.

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