Peter Lapper Personal Memories
Hello Heatherwood
I found your site on the web and I was overjoyed.
I spent many years in Heatherwood orthopaedic hospital as it was called in my young days.
I had two bad falls at the age of 2 years old and damaged my right hip, I was sent to Heatherwood in 1942 and was diagnosed with TB hip, I was in and out of there for most of my childhood up until 1953 when I had my big operation to fuse the right hip. Doctor Ahern was the surgeon then, A big strong Irishman with a deep Irish brogue which my mother could not understand, but I was strangely drawn to him he had great charisma he fixed my hip good and its still going strong today 52 years on.
I really do appreciate your work, it's nice to have this connection with my (second home) Although as child in the early days I wasn't to happy to leave my family so often to come all the way from Deptford to Ascot, I was looked after well though while I was in.
Short story, Mum was out shopping in Deptford High street one day me in tow, and a friend stopped her and said who's the little boy Maude, Mum replied that's my Pete he's bin in hospital again, I must have looked like a little Indian boy so dark with the Heatherwood tan!!
1958
This was the last time I was in Heatherwood summer 1958. I was having some problems with my knee on the bad leg, it suddenly became stiff I could not bend it much, so I was admitted once again to have a biopsy on the knee, I was told that I would have to stay in for 6 weeks to wait for the results, so here I was back in my second home again! I was on the men's ward. I remember once that I was playing hockey with a tennis ball using a walking stick upside down out on the verandah, and the ball went under the partition out there through to the women's ward, So off I went dashing through the ward to get the ball and I slipped on the polished floor nearly doing the splits bending the knee right back with a crack, blood everywhere, It bled for two days and two nights bandages about a foot thick, In the end I was given morphine that stopped the bleeding thank God.
Keep up the good work on the site.
Peter now lives in Eire but has fond memories of his second home.
2007
Jean Taylor recently contacted us and wrote:-
It was wonderful to read the news of Peter Lapper. I well remember him when he was on Ward 2 - a real cute baby. I occasionally worked on the Ward during Red Cross training stints.
Jean Taylor (now Taylor-Bell)
Jean has other memories of heatherwood as a staff member
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