A double amputee from Fife has had a hospital parking penalty notice waived, after The Courier.
Steven Reid (42), using a crutch, had struggled to negotiate steps leading to the private parking company’s office at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee to challenge the penalty notice. His own pleas fell on deaf ears.
The former joiner developed a rare illness following a minor injury at work that has resulted in major treatment at the hospital.
Steven got “a skelf” in his finger that led to a painful nerve condition and resulted in him losing a leg above the knee and part of his arm.
He is facing a further amputation and makes weekly visits to Ninewells for pain-relieving injections and clinic appointments.
Last Wednesday Steven, who recently moved to Leven from Glenrothes, found a parking notice on his adapted car.
He had parked outside the Tayside Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation Technology Centre, next to Ninewells’ multi-storey car park.
The notice states the vehicle was parked “in an unauthorised area” and identifies it as an ambulance bay. In fact, Steven took photographs to show only the edge of his tyres had strayed in to the next bay and there was no obstruction of any vehicles.
Steven said, “I went to the Vinci Park office and they insisted I would have to pay.
“I have enough to worry about with my condition and another amputation coming up, without this. It’s utterly ridiculous.”Life was ‘destroyed’In 2002 Steven was a self-confessed workaholic. He had his own business, employing 26 people at factories in Glenrothes and Falkirk. He never worked again after a splinter in his finger led to the rare condition reflex sympathetic dystrophy.
“It turned my life upside down and destroyed the life I had,” said Steven.
Part of his left arm was amputated in 2002 then, following an insect bite in Cyprus, the condition developed in his right leg and that was removed at the knee in 2004.
He is now preparing to have a further amputation of the same leg in a few weeks.
Steven also has pain and restricted movement in his right arm. He has an “electric arm” prosthesis fitted to his left stump, controlled via a spinal cord stimulator fitted in his neck that sends messages to his muscles and moves his prosthetic “fingers” and turns his “wrist.”
“I am the worst case of RSD in the whole of the UK,” said Steven, whose doctor at Ninewells arranged for him to be flown down to Oxford to see an expert there for a second opinion.
“There are other people who have it but nobody has the severity I have.”
But he says one good thing has come out of the experience. He met his wife Deirdre, who uses a wheelchair, at Ninewells.
On Thursday, after having the threat of the £20 penalty hanging over him for a week, Vinci Park waived the charge after The Courier contacted the firm’s Dundee manager, Gordon Brown.
Steven said Mr Brown was very apologetic and helpful but he wished he could have had that response on January 6, when he went to the Vinci office to challenge the notice.