The last few days I have had a strange pain in my flank which got too bad to ignore. For the first time ever I went to an Emergency Department, at The Mariners Hospital, Tavernier – about 10 miles away and apparently one of the top rural hospitals in the US! This was after discussions with our insurance company who would only cover that rather than a GP visit. An interesting experience. It was very quiet and I was ushered into a room straight away although did have to wait a while for the doctor. Not surprisingly I had a CT scan................. turned out they couldn’t find an obvious reason for the pain but did find an atrophic left kidney, possibly longstanding (on the right of the CT for those not familiar with imaging!!). I was discharged with painkillers and instructions to return to the UK for specialist follow up.