Dr Dick Board talks to Bexhill Rotary Club

The dining Room at the Cooden Beach Golf Club was full when Dr Dick Board, Medical Director of St Michael's Hospice, rose to address the members and guests at a recent meeting of the Bexhill Rotary Club.

The club was being visited by members of both Hastings Rotary Club and Heathfield and Waldren Rotary Club as well as the Past President of the Bexhill Club of Past Rotarians who was there to deliver the "Runners-Up Trophy" awarded after the recent, annual darts match.

Dr Board told them that he and his twin brother were born and raised locally (Westfield) and after initial aspirations to be either a vet or an engineer, he eventually opted for medicine and trained at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel.

After completing his training he returned to East Sussex, where after spending some time at St. Leonard's Hospital he left to become the junior partner in a small general practice where the senior partner "didn't feel very well" and after Dr Board sat in on just one five minute joint consultation, his senior partner died suddenly, leaving him responsible for the medical care of 3500 patients.

After that it was very much a case of having to learn on the job which included making as many as twenty house calls per day as well as providing surgery consultations and being called out at all hours of the night.

His audience were treated to a string of very amusing and entertaining anecdotes based upon his experiences including tales of a little old lady who kept chickens in her bedroom, breaking his ankle while trying to start his motorbike and being attacked by a drunken Glaswegian.

During this time he and his partners designed and had built a purpose-built, "state of the art" surgery with a large waiting room in which one of his patients appeared to have died, showing no signs of life until after he was carried out (bumping his head on the door as he departed) and laid