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The Christmas that went wrong: I ended up in A&E with burns from my mother’s gravy
After two horrendous weeks with chickenpox and norovirus, I thought I was finally better on Christmas Day. But I had reckoned without a jug of scalding BistoThe strangled half-scream I emitted as we all helped ourselves to turkey and trimmings let the entire family know that something was very wrong indeed. The pain was searing, like the heat of a thousand suns concentrated on to a single centimetre of skin. “You need to go to A&E,” said my mum, a retired nurse. My heart sank. The A&E department of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth hospital was the last place on Earth you would want to find yourself on Christmas Day, of all days.It was 2006 and, as my wife drove me to hospital, I slumped in the passenger seat in hideous pain, feeling ravenously hungry and intensely sorry for myself. It had all started two weeks earlier when my wife had delivered the news I had been dreading since becoming a father. “It’s finally happened,” she said gravely. “Lydia’s got chickenpox.” Continue read...
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