We Went on Holiday and Ended up in A&E (ER)

Injured while moving a caravan and lying in bed

It was the start of a caravanning holiday and we were heading off to Suffolk on the East coast of England. My husband, Vic, was moving the caravan off of the drive, down a slope, onto the road.

He parks the caravan so the hook-up is facing the garage — so someone can’t drive off with it. But this means he has to manoeuvre the caravan onto the road manually, using blocks to stop it from running away.

It was during this process that he got his finger trapped under the caravan wheels. He came into the house looking sorry for himself. The caravan had squashed his finger. It was bleeding, but it didn’t look too bad.

“I think it’ll be OK,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt much.”

So he wrapped his finger with tissues and drove to Suffolk towing the caravan behind the car. When we arrived at the campsite, we pulled onto the pitch and Vic unwrapped his finger. The nail fell off and there was blood everywhere. It looked like something out of a horror film.

The campsite warden gave us directions to the hospital and suggested a local health centre might patch it up. So we enquired at the health centre, but they said he needed to go to Accident and Emergency at Ipswich Hospital.

A few hours later, they’d cleaned and wrapped his wound, and sent him back ‘home’ — with instructions to return every couple of days to have it checked and re-dressed. The treatment was successful, and his nail is slowly regrowing.

Another injury while lying in bed

The next holiday, this time on the Isle of Purbeck, I was lying in the bed on my back doing literally nothing, and there was an audible snap. Something had just snapped in my upper back. Trying to get out of bed suddenly became really painful and moving my neck was a definite ‘no no’.

I spent the rest of our holiday walking around like a wooden mannequin, and it hasn’t resolved itself yet!

It’s very odd because it was weeks ago, but it still hurts. It gets better then gets worse again. I try not to strain the muscle, so it can recover. But it improves a bit, and then I do something like yesterday when I tried to reach a top shelf and it got worse again.

I’m hoping that goes away soon. I think it’s just a pulled muscle! But I feel like an old croc!