One day about thirty years I was splitting some logs for a family who needed firewood when a shard of metal from the log splitter embedded itself in my arm … so it was off to Middlemore Hospital to await surgery.
I was waiting for ages in a four-bed ward where the other three patients had broken legs from motorbike and construction accidents.
Their wait … and mine … seemed interminable, but it was clear they were in a lot more pain than me.
“Call up your MP” … I suggested to one guy with both legs broken and in horrible pain.
I blithely told him I was a TV reporter and he should tell a politician to raise the issue with the right people.
Bizarrely it seemed … I got my surgery before the guys with the busted legs. The next morning … the doctors came round … one of them … the top bloke recognised me … and was very chummy.
On my way home the radio news was reporting that an MP was asking Parliament why a tv reporter with a relatively minor injury had jumped the queue ahead of his constituent … the guy with the two broken legs.
Sure enough the media picked it up … and I was gutted. I closed my curtains at home and didn’t pick up the phone for a couple of days.
The guy who had been my surgeon came to my rescue in my potential public shaming.
In the weekend paper that doctor said it was simple … I had a ‘penetrating injury’ and needed to go first because of the risk of infection. Nothing at all to do with who I was.
But you know what … it was one of the most instructive experiences I’d ever had … For one thing it made me a lot more careful, about the way I handled what I perceived to be … the real facts.
As a reporter it taught me to handle people and ‘the truth’ more carefully.