NHS indignity for Queen’s bridesmaid after horror injury
LADY Pamela Hicks is one of the Queen’s two surviving bridesmaids, but she had to face the indignity of being wheeled round her local NHS hospital in an office chair after suffering a serious leg injury.
Her daughter, the former model India Hicks, who was one of Princess Diana’s bridesmaids, has revealed that she took the drastic measure because no wheelchairs were available.
‘This was a few weeks ago and we were rushing her through the hospital with an open leg wound,’ India, 49, discloses online.
‘She had managed to remove all the skin and flesh down to her tender 87-year-old bone.
‘“Minor emergencies?” my mother said, after I asked a nurse where we should be rushing to. “Minor? I feel quite insulted,” she joked.’
India, whose grandfather, the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was assassinated by the IRA in 1979, adds: ‘A few days later we were back in the hospital, to see if a skin graft was needed. Our local NHS hospital had either hidden or run out of wheelchairs.
‘My mother and I looked at the long dark corridor she was expected to walk down, to reach the elevator, to go up two floors, to walk down another corridor into the Plastics department. I found her a seat, sat her down and began to hunt around.
‘I returned armed with a slightly dodgy desk chair, on wheels. “Righty-ho,” I said, “on you get.” And we swivelled our way through the hospital.’
India does not name the hospital, but the family’s home is in Watlington, Oxfordshire.
Lady Pamela is currently mourning her sister, Countess Mountbatten, who died last Tuesday, aged 93.
A cousin of Prince Philip, Lady Pamela is remarkably active and worked as a historical consultant on this year’s film about her father, Viceroy’s House, which starred Hugh Bonneville as Lord Mountbatten.
Lady Pamela was very close to her late sister, with India saying: ‘They had been so inseparable that my mother even went on her sister’s honeymoon with her.’