2021 Mid Wales Diary

Mid Wales Diary

By David Holland BSc, CSci, FFPM-RCPS(Glasg). Chartered Scientist and Podiatry Expert Witness.

The current situation with Covid has been a disaster for many Foot Health businesses. How can you make a living if patients won’t come to you, or you can’t go to them? Things are easing this year, but of course it can take years to build back lost income.

I have vivid memories of my Sunderland Chiropody Practice income stream drying up in the mid-80s – similar, in a way, to the problems experienced by those delivering Foot Health through Covid today. In 1984 the Miners’ Strike hit the coalfields and mining villages of the North-East of England. The film “Billy Elliot” portrayed just some of the hardships of the mining communities at that time. The knock-on effect on shops, pubs, hairdressers, and Chiropodists (we were all Chiropodists then) was drastic and immediate. In my case I left the Practice to my business partner and moved on – back eventually into the NHS where I worked as a Senior 1 Chiropodist at a Project in Jarrow. Thankfully Covid has not affected my current practice, which is medicolegal. I deal with Solicitors and Barristers by email, phone, or video-conferencing, and moved over to assessing clients by video-link in March 2020.

The new house project is coming along well. My office is finished, and is pretty much self-contained, with shredder, photocopier, desktop PC, various laptops, phone, and internet. It is also a very nice space to work from – thanks to Alison my wife, who spent an age plotting and scheming (as she would say) and doing much of the hard physical work to ensure the finished article. Final verdict? It’s brilliant!

The house, really a large, modern cottage, is called Wyvern. A Wyvern is a mythical two-legged dragon – think Game of Thrones dragons - you won’t be too far out. Wyverns have some historical significance in Wales. Welsh hero Owain Glyndwr (1359-1415) carried a Wyvern emblem into battle.

Neither of us liked the name initially – but can you change a house-name safely? Certainly it is considered very back luck to change the name of a boat. The name of the house – Wyvern – will probably stay. On buying or hiring equipment for your Practice - in 1978 my business Partner and I bought two dust-extracting drills – unheard-of luxury for most Chiropodists at that time. In the 1980s a published research paper emphasised the potential dangers of nail dust pathogens. I do wonder about that research paper. My father was a Chiropodist and was busy seeing patients from 1952 until 1991. He used a drill on nearly every patient – without dust extraction. For a man who also smoked 80 a day until he was well into his 50s he made a remarkable job of keeping his lungs healthy – he died aged 86 – not from any respiratory condition.