The (Mis)adventures On Portland Bill

The day started uneventfully enough with a stroll around the sub-tropical gardens at Abbotsbury and a spot of lunching a cafe overlooking Chesil Beach (see extra).

We then headed for the lighthouse at the furthest extremity of Portland Bill, the peninsula that juts out from the Jurassic Coast into the English Channel. Despite having lived in Somerset for 42 years we had never set foot on Portland so thought it was about time we did.

We had had a walk around the lighthouse and we’re heading for the colourful huts in the distance in the main blip when Tess slipped down a little ridge in the footpath, no more than 18 inches high, and fell flat on her face. She was laughing about how ridiculous she must look, as you do, when she suddenly realised that her shoulder was agony if she moved it.

When she tried to get up she nearly fainted with the pain so, after a 999 call and two hours lying on the path in the company of an emergency responder, an off duty paramedic who was out walking with her husband, and eventually 6 members of the local coastguard who were called out after the  two successive ambulances intended for Tess had to be re-routed to more urgent cases, we were able to get her to A&E in Dorchester were X-rays showed she had broken her humerus and torn the bits that attach it to the shoulder.

Two hours later she was fitted with a sling to hold things together for the couple of months it should take for the bones to knit and a prescription for morphine to relieve the pain and we headed back to our hotel.

As it happens, it turns out that Tess and morphine don’t mix so we spent the early hours of Tuesday morning in the company of an ambulance crew in our hotel room while the monitored her recovery from the scary ill effects it caused. Like all the NHS staff and members of the public who offered help, they were wonderfully kind and professional.

As you can see this is a back blip and we’re safely home now (Wednesday) and Tess is OK, if more than a little uncomfortable and incapacitated: looks like I’ll be wearing my nurse’s uniform for the foreseeable!

I’m way behind with both blips and comments, I’m afraid.