“Till Death Do Us Part” is what the next episode of ’24 Hours in A&E’ is all about
Are you excited about the next episode (no 17) of the ’24 Hours in A&E’ as much as we are? The show is back with a bang is on Wednesday, 10th of February on Channel 4 at 9pm.
Follow @StGeorgesTrust on Twitter for a countdown and live updates, but most importantly comment while you watch under #24HrsAE.
59-year-old Charulata is rushed to A&E after collapsing at home with signs of a stroke. She woke her husband Dilip in the middle of the night shaking and with loss of feeling down her left side. Charulata has a previous history of strokes, has diabetes and is waiting for a heart bypass. Medics send her for a CT scan to find out what has happened.
While they wait for results, Dilip talks about meeting his wife through family and marrying at Wandsworth Town Hall. “I can’t say it was love at first sight,” he says. “They say you marry first, them love grows afterwards!”
The couple ran a corner shop together in Tooting. “She was very warm, she would make friends in a minute,” says Dilip. “People used to hang around in the shop just to chat with her.” Dilip then spent a decade away from his family trying to make money running businesses in America, while Charulata looked after their children. “I did a lot of things wrong. I still regret it,” says Dilip. “[I missed] children and family life. When you go home there’s nobody, only four walls.”
28-year-old carpenter Luke has come into A&E with his girlfriend Stacy having cut his finger at work. Stacey claims it looks like a paper cut, but Luke – who has epilepsy – is worried that it might trigger a seizure.
Luke’s epilepsy began three years ago after he crashed his bicycle into a stationary car. He was treated at St George’s then too. “He had swelling on his brain, he had fractured his skull, he had a blood clot on his brain,” says Stacy. “They said basically ‘Phone anyone you think would want to be here to say goodbye to Luke’.
“They had to do surgery on his brain and take part of his skull off. He went in with a 10% chance of living,” she says. “He was in the rehab unit for three months, he had to relearn how to read and write and talk. For him to turn around and say ‘I love you’ was just the best thing.”
Meanwhile 75-year-old retired linguist Anne is in St George’s with husband Steve after falling and hurting her arm while on holiday in Naples. Anne took a couple of painkillers and continued her holiday, but an x-ray reveals that she’s broken her elbow.
Anne and Steve have been together for 50 years, they met at a party where they’d both come with other people. “He was very charming, I thought he was gorgeous,” says Anne. “He looked very British and he had a motorbike. I was bowled over.”
Steve proposed three days after they met, much to his family’s bemusement. But the couple have been very happy together, despite the odd argument. “There were times when we had the odd row and threw plates,” says Steve. “Our family does tend to throw plates.”
