"Top treatment from top people-7 stitches - no..."

I am a 70 year old stubborn man. At around 5.30pm I fell at home and hit the top of my head which bled profusely for about 5 minutes until the pressure my family were applying stopped the bleeding. I just wanted to leave it and let it heal but our friend and neighbour, who is a gp took a look and insisted that I needed stitches. My daughter phoned the Walk in Clinic at Harold Wood who said that they closed at 8.00pm but there were so many waiting they could not accept any more patients this evening. I reluctantly let my family take me to Queens A & E, where I expected to be kept hanging about for at least 4 hours.

Was I proved to be wrong. We arrived at A&E at about 6.00pm. There was no one queueing at the A&E reception and someone, who it turned out was a doctor and was carrying the duty of Triage, came out from their room, examined my head and sent me through to their nearby Urgent Care Centre. There were about 10 people there but I had hardly sat down when I was called in by the nurse who cleaned up the blood from my head, cleaned the wound which proved to be about 3 inches long (75mm for younger people) and put in 7 stitches. They also attended to a small cut I had sustained to my hand which they glued closed, and finished off by giving me a tetanus jab. I was then sent on my way with a 7 day course of antibiotics.

I was on my home at 6.15 but the treatment was so quick I found it hard to believe that it had taken that long. Seemed like 30 minutes to me. Thank you Queens satff.