I've tumbled down the stairs a few times and not called 999. Just curled up on the doormat for a while (had a newspaper delivered on to my head once!) and waited to see if I'd be able to move in a little while. Generally speaking, after half an hour I've been able to crawl to the living room where there's medications and a couple of blankets. I've had some bloody nasty bruises, although bruises is all they've been. (Although on the day I have also got internal bleeding and die horribly, you may stand at my funeral and say "I told you so".) My reason for not calling you has buggerall to do with 'not being a bother'. It's because I feel bruised and sore and rubbish and the last thing I particularly want to do is trundle off to the A&E, for an uncomfortable few hours in the waiting room surrounded by drunks and screaming kids, followed by the best part of a day in a cubicle, followed by having to try and get my crippled self back home again somehow which is entertaining and/or expensive even when I'm *not* spectacularly bruised. I'll call an ambulance if I think something is exceptionally wrong, but a few cuts and bruises doesn't do it. If you've been disabled long enough to get a stairlift, then finding it a little bit more painful than usual to shuffle about the house isn't a big thing. You're USED to gritting your teeth and getting on with your life. The alternative - fretting about every twinge, spending all the time in bed, padding the house with bubblewrap - doesn't bear thinking about. I'm not trying to singlehandedly save the ambulance service or avoid encroaching on anybody's time. I'm being entirely selfish :)