Waiting Room

A Memory of Preston.

In Spring 1948 I caught my finger in a folding chair at school and by the evening an abscess had formed. It was so painful that because our doctor's surgery was already closed my father took me to the Infirmary, but we landed in the maternity department, where we were really out of place! The next day we went again, and as there were no penicillin tablets in those days I had to have injections morning and evening and had to wait for them on a hard bench in the very crowded waiting room where there were all manner of patients, most of them far worse off than I. On Saturday mother took me to see the doctor in the Infirmary, and then the abscess was lanced. This treatment went on for 2 weeks, and at the end all was well again. In 1954 my younger sister was born in the Infirmary and I went to visit mother in the maternity department, where I'd been by mistake 6 years earlier.