THEY say things tend to go in threes, and I, for one, rather hope that’s true.

Readers of this column may recall how I spent more than 30 years without spending a night in hospital, after having my tonsils out in Bradford Royal Infirmary in the early 1970s.

However, that proud record was abruptly broken in 2007, when I managed to snap my Achilles tendon, which was quickly repaired at York Hospital. I had barely thrown my crutches away after that mishap, when I started getting strange pains in my right side. These turned out to be due to my gall bladder being full of gallstones, which have a nasty habit of trying to escape their home through a duct which is far too small for them thus the pain.

Well, after quite a few tests of one sort or another, I ended up back in York Hospital, in the day unit this time, to have the said gall bladder removed. That was in October, and the scars, small and neat though they are, still look pretty fresh.

So had I finally stopped being a burden on the NHS? Fraid not. I had started getting some nasty pains in the back of my mouth, in the very spot where I knew I had a particularly complicated problem with an impacted wisdom tooth so complicated, in fact, that my dentist had left the situation alone for as long as possible, on the grounds surgery, in hospital and under a general anaesthetic, would be the only other solution to the problem.

Unfortunately, the new pains were the signal that leaving well alone was no longer an option.

So last week it was back to York Hospital’s day unit, for what I sincerely hope will be my last visit for a while.

This is not through a lack of gratitude or dissatisfaction with the job done by the local NHS. On the contrary, my experience of York Hospital as a patient has been about as positive as it could be, under the circumstances.

I have now called on the services of several different medical teams, who have repaired my leg and got me (literally) back on my feet; got rid of a diseased inner organ which was causing me a lot of pain; and now dispensed with another dental source of pain, which was also endangering the rest of my teeth.

But, as a retired medic said to me recently, the NHS is one institution you never want to get your money’s-worth out of, so I hope no one will be offended if it is quite a while before I’m heading back to the hospital, as a patient, anyway.

Getting my mouth back into shape is enough for the time being. After the op, one of the doctors told me they had to deal not only with the impacted wisdom tooth, but also with another tooth it had buried inside the gum, which was twisted round and pointing at the my tongue. They had to cut the gum open, remove some bone and cut the teeth up in situ before removing them.

I’m sure they’ve done another very neat job, but I did feel like I’d had one or two decent slaps round the chops when I came round. And I still have what feels like a gaping hole at the back of my mouth.

Maybe it’s a sign of my infantile nature, but having a wonky mouth is making me a little unhappy, what with not knowing what I can eat and drink safely.

The good side of it is having an excuse not to talk.

It’s great. I can be as monosyllabic as I like, and if anyone presses me conversationally I just go “umm” a bit louder, looked pained and clutch my jaw. I may even consider a vow of silence.