It was a holiday accident that, in years to come, the whole family may well laugh about - but when 41-year-old mum-of-two Lindsey tripped over her seven-year-old son during a caravan park power cut it was just not funny!
Lindsey had put her arm out to break her fall and broke her wrist in the process.
Because the fracture was so slight, it wasn’t spotted when Lindsey went to hospital the next day for an X-ray, yet the pain was still unbearable.
“I couldn’t believe the pain I was in,” Lindsey recalled.
“Simple tasks, such as getting dressed, lifting the kettle, opening doors with handles that needed to be twisted and generally cooking and caring for the family were all almost impossible because of the pain.”
After a couple of months of suffering Lindsey met with Orthopaedic Consultant Gunaratnam Shyamalan – ‘Mr Shyam’ – who explained: “There was no wonder the previous hospital couldn’t see the fracture because it was a very hairline breakoff the radius, that was only visible thanks to an MRI scan.
“What Lindsey had endured was a ‘step’ or ‘ridge’ between where the bone had fractured and that was causing her pain whenever she rotated her wrist even to a minor extent.”
Using a traction tower which gently pulls the joint apart creating a potential operating space, enabling Mr Shyam to use a 2mm ‘shaver’ to remove the post-fracture joint scarring, before smoothing the defect with a 2mm power burr.
Mr Shyam remarked that: “We really are talking small. Wrist arthroscopy is nothing new but what has changed is the equipment and the new techniques allowing us to work with very small joints in the thumb and knuckles.”
As for Lindsey, she added: “I am now enjoying family life again – I can play with the boys without worrying about hurting my wrist, we’re back to regular swimming sessions as well as playing badminton and cricket.
“The operation was virtually pain-free and recovery, thanks to some great physio, was really quick. I was worried my wrist might have had to of been in a plaster cast or something but I was just bandaged, a few days later my bandaged was replaced by a couple of sticky plasters.
“I was back at work within two weeks – it was amazing to have the pain disappear so quickly – and with so little fuss.”