Prosthetic leg goes astray
Jennie Bensley has been using a prosthetic leg ever since losing her own to a drinkdriver 14 years ago.
But for the last 12 months medical problems from surgery have left her confined to a wheelchair, unable to use an artificial limb, and dreaming of the day she could walk again.
Bensley thought that day would be last Thursday. She had been fitted for a new leg at the Wellington Artificial Limb Centre and told it would be couriered to her New Plymouth address by that afternoon.
The problem was, the leg had been sent to her old address in Fitzroy and when she went to pick it up it wasn’t there.
Bensley spent the weekend frantically trying to find answers to where it could be.
‘‘I called the limb centre on Friday and said ‘where’s my leg?’ and they said it was delivered on Thursday but they delivered it to an address from two years ago.
‘‘All weekend I tried calling round at my old house but the couple who live there own a dairy and are hardly ever home. They remember seeing it but didn’t pick it up and then it disappeared.’’
Bensley assumed the package had been stolen, but it turned out that once the courier had been notified that they had delivered to the wrong address they went back to pick it up. However, Bensley wasn’t told and feared the worst
Her dreams came true on Monday afternoon when it turned up on the doorstep at her new address in Merrilands.
She said she had been on the verge of notifying the police. ‘‘That’s going to be good isn’t it? Me ringing up saying have you got my leg? They’ll be wondering if I’m pulling their leg.’’