A few years ago I took my then-2-year-old boy to A&E at Homerton Hospital (which hospital is the reason my daughter was born at home, but that's another story) because he had some glass in his foot after an accident in the garden with a jam jar, and could'nt put his weight on it. I knew he had glass in there! I knew where it was. We waited at the hospital for ages, and then he was X-rayed, and this officious male nurse told us there was no glass. End of story. No: that IS the end of the story. He wouldn't listen to me, he wouldn't ask someone else, he wouldn't look at the child's foot again, he was done. The place was piling up with drunks. We went home. My poor kid had to just get on with it. One morning two weeks later a nice big shiny piece of glass, about half a centimetre long, popped out through the calloused skin that was by then building up on the bottom of his foot.