Doctors ‘selling flowers’
I felt I should write about my one and only occasion of meeting Dr Cronin. It was at the ungodly hour of 3am or so. I was around 13/14 years old at the time and it came about when I was awoken from my slumber and asked to go to the village to knock up Ciss Neill in the post office (telephone exchange - this must have been before Kilworth had a public phone box) to call a doctor for a neighbour who
was in a bad way.
The doctor in question happened to be Dr Cronin who stressed to me that he had already been in Kilworth that day (not to the same patient), more or less saying it could wait until the morning. Ciss scribbled the words ‘tell him you’ll get another doctor’ and pushed it in my direction. This I did and, after giving it a bit of thought, he said he’d be ‘out within the next half hour’.
I was put on point duty to watch the doctor’s car arriving and when it eventually did, I approached the man alighting from the car and asked the silly question:
“Are you the doctor?”, to which I received the rather curt reply: “No, I’m selling flowers.” Well, what did I expect after all?
Needless to say, that softened my cough for me. Fortunately (and thanks to Dr Cronin), the patient recovered (as did my bruised ego) and I am sure Dr Cronin most likely put it down as simply ‘another day in the life of a local GP’.
Dr Sean O’Flynn who is seen in the picture making the presentation, must not have been in situ in Knockbrack House, Kilally at the time, as he would have been the first port of call.