I’m out of my environment. I’m in this environment, I don’t know anything. And there might have been key words that may have put me off. She may have said, you know - and you tend to think, you just hear that one word, don’t you? I don’t know. I can’t really remember now. And don’t forget this was a shock. I’d never been in hospital before, you know - lying in a bed, foot up, what’s going to happen? Work? You know, everything that’s going through your mind, you don’t really need someone to come and say to you, “Would you be part of our trial as well?” “Well, what is it?” you know. I don’t know.

 

On top of everything else, yes. You go through a lot, don’t you, while you’re lying there.

 

I mean, you are coming at someone, you know, when they are in pain and they don’t know what’s going to happen, and they’re a bit scared, and a lot of things are going through your head. I realise that’s the time you have got to ask them - or is it? I don’t know. Well, I suppose really it depends how long you’re in. I mean I was in three or four days, I’d had the scan. You know, at what point would you ask someone? I don’t know. You’ve got to ask them at the beginning, I suppose, because it’s the beginning of what’s happening to them. 

And then this young lady came to me from [town], she said she was from [name] University, that’s what I remembered first. Then she said she’d leave me her DVD to have a look at and would I take part in this trial? And what I remember her explaining to me was that fractured, fractures to the heel you’re never too sure, really, which way to go, whether they should do surgery or just leave it, and would I watch the DVD. And I said yes, so I did that and she left it with me. I think she came back either late that evening or the next day, and asked me if I’d take part in the trial, and that I would make the decision. And as soon as she said that I thought, “Ooh, I know nothing about this. I would rather somebody who’s a consultant or is, you know, knows this field to make the decision for me.” I didn’t, I wouldn’t have wanted to make the decision at all.

 

I realised that the trial was, is important and it has to be done, and for the good of everyone else, but I’m afraid I thought, “Not on me.” I know that’s sounds awful, doesn’t it? Meanwhile because you’ve got the internet access while you’re lying in a bed, I did look at quite a bit on the internet all about - and I saw lots of things which was quite interesting - but that wouldn’t have swayed me I had made up my mind that, no, I didn’t want to make this decision. I wanted the consultant to do it, and that was it, really. And I explained that to them and off she went.

 

 

Mm, oh yes, it was like, Oh no, no. I don’t want to, you know. I’m here, and I want someone to tell me what I ought to do.” I didn’t want to have, don’t give me choices because I might make the wrong one. 

It’s a decision you have to make within yourself, don’t you? You really have to decide for yourself. It’s how you feel about surgery, isn’t it? If you feel, you know, if that scares you - it didn’t me. If you want to leave it to someone else, that was me, you see, so if you consider the consultant to have the knowledge or [pause] - I don’t know. It’s a decision you have to make on your own. And I didn’t have to ask anyone else, I just knew that it’s the decision I was going to make. It was my foot, my decision, my life and this was how I was going to cope with it, that was it really.

 

 

I was quite happy.

 

Oh, she was alright, she was fine, you know. She didn’t try and talk me out of it or anything like that. No, she just said, “Yeah, I understood”, and that was it. I did say I was sorry because, you know, obviously she was looking for a, you know, a volunteer or whatever it was but, you know. Actually, coming to think about it now, I can remember her coming into the room and I think as she was coming towards me I knew what she was going to do and I knew what she was going to say, I literally thought, “No, I’m not doing it.” So, you know.