Michael Reeves who was a patient from 1962-64

Googling on iPad, the day before going into hospital to be assessed for hip replacement, Michael found the blog and rang Jane. What follows is based on our phone conversation, on 31 July, 2014, and an email Michael sent after I’d sent him my written version of what he said, with the photo. 

Michael was a patient in Marguerite Hepton Hospital from 1962-1964, with Perthes disease, first of all on Ward 3 (which was mixed, and had a babies’ section at one end, and later in Ward 4, the Boys’ ward.  He was under the care of ‘Professor’ Clarke. 

He mainly has good memories of his time there. “I remember the Gala days. One year four of us boys went as the Beatles in the fancy dress competition. The nurses helped us to make cardboard guitars – I think we won the prize. 

But the highlight of my stay at Marguerite was meeting Billy Fury when he visited Ward 3. Here’s a photo, from the Wetherby Post, that was taken when Billy saw the toy gun in my hand, and came to my bedside to show me how to twirl it like a proper cowboy.  Marty Wilde also came during my time there, but this was the special one.” 

 Wetherby Post photo of Mike with Billy Fury

 Like many other children with Perthes disease, Michael left hospital in callipers. But "when I first came out I wanted to go back again, it all felt so strange. But I soon got used to being at home again, with my younger brother and two sisters – my older sister used to come with my parents on visits.

The first year and a half of school were at Potter Newton. I remember the dark blue school bus, called "Samuel Legard", that came to round picking up children on the school run. 

The callipers came off after a year, and I remember how, without them, I was suddenly much smaller than most other boys in my year.”

His hips functioned pretty well until Michael was 42: “I played football for 22 years with no trouble at all. Then, I had a fall and my hips started to hurt really badly, so I went along to the hospital. They did X-rays, but they seemed to think it was nothing – told me to take Paracetamol and work through it. Then a couple of days later they phoned back to say they'd had a closer look at the X-rays and they needed to see me again. After an MIT scan, it turned out that my hips had both crumbled and needed replacing. What a relief – I thought it might be bone cancer! Both hips were replaced successfully, though one is now due for review after 17 years.” 

Michael remembers quite a few fellow patients, Josh Ward, Stephen and Lawrence Hill, Stephen Wood, Michael Delving, Barbara Cotton, Colleen Martin, Martin Procter, Staff Nurse Hanson, Nurse Boothe, Nurse Stewart and her sister Male Nurse Mr Appleyard, Sister Gough, Sister Ireland. More recently, he met a couple of them in Middleton.

Mike let me know later that the hip won't need replacing yet.