John was in his early twenties and had had a motorcycle accident. He'd had his leg in plaster after it had been pinned, and one arm in plaster as well. Being male and young enough to be easily embarrassed, he hated having to use a bedpan and a urinal for his personal needs and also having to endure the cringing shame of a bed bath regularly. He'd been told that, soon, he could have the waterproof sleeves put over his casts and be taken for a shower, but he was too impatient to wait. That weekend, he'd badgered the bank nurse, working on the principle that she wouldn't know that he wasn't allowed out of bed yet. She had relented and agreed to take him to the wet room to use the toilet there and then, luxury!, to shower himself with his good hand with his casts wrapped in their waterproof sleeves.

John was still wearing a hospital gown - the sort that only just meets at the back and ties, always leaving a gap which caused the nurses to suggest that the gowns must have been made by Seymore Bum Ltd. The nurse pulled the curtains around his bed and the slipped the sleeves over his plasters, closing the waterproof fastenings at the top of his thigh and at his shoulder. She wheeled the chair beside the bed and, really, should have had another nurse to help her, but John had insisted how capable he was with just her help. The chair was a white plastic shell chair with 1½" diameter holes all over it for water to drain and on white plastic coated steel framework with lockable castors. What neither John nor the nurse realized was how sharp the moulded edge around those holes actually was.

She helped John into the chair and arranged his gown to drape down either side of the chair so that he wasn't sitting on any gown at all to make transfer to the toilet easier. As John sat on the chair and got himself comfortable to be wheeled to the wet room, the reason for the safety warning happened: his scrotum and testes slipped through one of the holes and were dangling below the plastic seat of the chair. All would have been well except that there was a tear in the vinyl flooring that had just happened earlier in the day. A hole had been made and covered with warning tape to make people avoid the hole it covered. This wouldn't have been a problem except that the nurse had pushed John forwards instead of, as the chair was designed for, pulling him behind her. The inevitable happened. Just as she was pushing him out of the door of his ward bay, the front wheel suddenly dropped into the hole stopping the chair dead and causing John to be thrown forward. because of the cast on his leg and one arm, he was not able to stop himself from falling and over balanced, falling out of the chair.

An unearthly scream came from John's lips as his scrotum and testes were ripped from his body, sliced through buy the sharp edge on the plastic moulding. As he fell, other nurses, hearing his scream, came running to help. John was lying on the floor in agony with blood pouring from him. One nurse grabbed a towel and pressed it firmly between his legs to staunch the flow of blood with other nurses phoned for a doctor and porters with a trolley. The doctor took one look, ordered up saline to be run in to john's cannula as fast as possible, rang down to theatre and helped staff lift him onto the trolley as the porters arrived. Then, with the nurse still pressing the towel where his genitals had been, he was wheeled along the corridor to the lift to be taken to theatre to the stares of the visitors and patients in the corridor. John hurt too much to be embarrassed.

Unfortunately the surgeons had to stop the bleeding first and there was no way, with the blood loss he had, that they could even consider microsurgery to reattach his testes. In fact, they were so torn and damaged that reattachment probably wouldn't have worked anyway. His skin between his legs was tidied up after the bleeding was stopped so that he would have a smooth scar. Arrangements were made for him to get testosterone patches on discharge to keep up his male characteristics, but he'd be 'shooting blanks' for the rest of his life.

The hospital trust paid compensation, of course. A large six figure sum was the final settlement with both sides eager to avoid the glare on publicity. John wanted to avoid the headlines "Patient castrated in hospital accident" and likewise the hospital wished to avoid the publicity, hence the out of court settlement agreeable to both parties.

John's desire for a shower and to use a toilet certainly changed his life - for ever.