Two doctors have completed the last leg of a 160-mile run from Cardiff to London to highlight opposition to the Government's proposed NHS reforms, even though one needed treatment for a knee injury.
Dr David Wilson and Dr Clive Peedell, both cancer consultants at James Cook Hospital, Middlesbrough, completed the run – which started at the statue of NHS founder Aneurin Bevan in Cardiff and took them six days – with RCGP chair Dr Clare Gerada joining them for the last leg to central London.
The doctors decided to embark on the epic run in an attempt to highlight opposition to the Government's proposed NHS reforms. When they arrived in central London on Sunday, they delivered a mock postcard from Mr Bevan to 10 Downing Street.
The run was almost cut short for Dr Wilson, as five miles short of completing the final leg of the long-distance Bevan Run a knee injury threatened to force him to stop.
However, fellow runner and colleague Dr Clive Peedell tweeted for help to Dr Jonathon Tomlinson, a GP in Hackney with an interest in orthopaedics. After catching a train across London, the GP cycled to the scene of the injury, where he gave Dr Wilson a hydrocortisone and lidocaine injection.
According to Dr Tomlinson, Wilson looked as if he was in ‘absolute agony'. He said: ‘My medical advice was: "Don't carry on." He absolutely begged me to do whatever it would take to get him over the line.'
‘It's like the summit fever mountaineers get when they're near the top of the mountain. The clouds are rolling in but they keep going.'
Dr Wilson said that, once injected, he was determined to carry on. ‘It was still really sore but we gritted our teeth, hopped along and managed to make it.'
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