A U.K. doctor was reunited with her lost diamond ring after another doctor found it in the pocket of his scrubs at a different hospital nearly 100 miles away.
Radhika Ramasamy is a consultant anesthetist at the West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust in Bury St. Edmunds, which is about 85 miles northeast of London.
In December, Ramasamy was preparing to administer a spinal anesthetic when she put her ring, a gift from her husband, in the pocket of her scrub, according to a news release from the Trust.
“I meant to put the ring back on afterwards but ended up doing another procedure and forgot about it,” Ramasamy said.
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It wasn’t until the evening of the next day that she realized her ring was missing. Because it was the weekend, she did not report the missing gem to her team until Monday.
In the meantime, the scrubs had been sent through their routine laundry procedure.
“To be honest I never expected to get it back as I thought it would be crushed in the machinery at the laundry,” Ramasamy said.
A few days later, on Dec. 19, anesthetics registrar Surah Shah was suiting up to administer a procedure at the Royal Free Hospital in Suffolk, nearly 100 miles away from Ramasamy.
“As I put the scrubs on, something clattered to the floor and a colleague spotted the ring and alerted me,” Shah said
Shah initially thought the ring might belong to one of his colleagues at the hospital, but after asking around, he contacted the facilities team.
The team reached out to the laundry service it uses for its scrubs and learned that the ring was reported missing by a doctor in the West Suffolk Hospital. They soon reunited Ramasamy and her ring.
“I’m so happy to have it returned,” Ramasamy said. “It just shows how honest people are and I want to say a huge thank you to all the people involved – my end at the West Suffolk Hospital and at the Royal Free Hospital — in reuniting me with a ring that has real sentimental value to me as it was a birthday present from my husband a few years ago. I know it’s been an incredible team effort and I am so appreciative of how so many people have gone the extra mile to track me down and return it to me.”
Shah said it was “nice to feel part of a bit of a little miracle.”
