Let’s spare a thought for families whose loved ones end up in hospital casualty units for Christmas – mine included, after a right old festive ding-dong.

I was shouting merrily on high to my wife from our kitchen.

Telling her how delighted I was with our new cutlery.

Fancy French-made forks and knives, with lovely, elegant handles in mixed colours and sleek, shiny blades with very sharp serrated edges.

It hadn’t been easy to buy the knives online because security measures now seem to be kicking in after some shocking court cases.

Where young, underage lunatics had acquired blades with ridiculous ease online so they could murder people.

I was quite reassured that they had tightened things up and didn’t mind the checking process.

Even my friendly neighbourhood postie was obliged to act like a North Korean border guard to check my credentials before handing over the package, which was plastered with dire warnings about its potentially lethal contents.

But now I was in full swing in the kitchen with the knives.

And I was singing their praises as they sliced through the thick beef I was gripping – with such ease it was like butter.

So razor-sharp and efficient that I didn’t notice I was also slicing off the end of my thumb.

Didn’t notice at first, that is.

With light travelling faster than the speed of sound, my eyes spotted the unfolding horror quicker than my brain triggered blood-curdling shrieks from my throat.

I couldn’t believe my brain had the nerve to send me a newsflash when it should be busy sorting this out: warning me that more people died by accident in the home than anywhere else.

I like to think I’m quite calm in these emergency situations, but I cried to my wife that I must go to the hospital immediately to have my thumb amputated.

Obviously, being a woman meant she took all this in her stride and dismissed the silly notion straight away.

All I had to do, she instructed me, was to apply firm pressure to stem the blood with some handy kitchen towel and then hold my thumb up in the air like a Roman emperor about to deliver a message to a stricken gladiator.

I doubted whether the detached flapping bit at the end of my thumb would heal up and stick back together again on its own without urgent medical intervention – or special glue from B&Q.

So I wondered if I should report to casualty anyway for stitching.

She said they would laugh me out of the place because it was hardly life and death – or ask if I had a week to spare hanging around in a hospital corridor.

It’s now been a week, at the time of writing, but it seems to be sticking together at last.

Little did I know, but shortly after my little episode a new family casualty crisis burst upon us and threatened to ruin Christmas.

It was far worse than my clumsy self-inflicted woe.

My eldest grandson, 14, had been chasing his younger brother in a bit of horseplay as they walked home from school.

I think he wanted to throttle him or something brotherly like that.

But he fell badly during his pursuit and smashed his elbow on the pavement.

Two days passed by.

During which he spent about six hours initially at Aberdeen children’s hospital before reporting back for surgery the next day.

After an operation lasting several hours to insert pins into his arm and followed by an overnight stay in hospital, the worst was over.

We had held our breaths, but Christmas joy could start again.

How could something which appeared to be mere rough and tumble end so badly?

Yet this kind of thing stalks us all; our family could see that from how busy it was at the hospital.

My grandson was gutted because he was booked for a singing engagement at a Christmas concert at Torry on the night it happened.

He was well-rehearsed and raring to go.

But he kept nursing staff entertained at least after they gave him laughing gas – or nitrous oxide, actually – to ease his pain and anxiety.

He was in good hands with the excellent medics putting him back together.

In the darkness of misery in hospital, streaks of inspiration can also appear to bring hope to young patients.

The orthopaedic surgeon repairing my grandson’s arm was an inspirational figure in himself, who knows what it’s like to suffer as a child.

Consultant Mike Reidy has featured in the P&J previously, describing his incredible achievement in overcoming dyslexia to reach the heights in medicine.

I guess it nurtured empathy to walk in the footsteps of bewildered and frightened children.

We’re all grateful to him and colleagues, especially at this time of year.

David Knight is the long-serving former deputy editor of The Press and Journal

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