Livingston boss David Martindale says last weekend's victory over Aberdeen was the perfect medicine after revealing he had to crawl into hospital the day before.
The 47-year-old took ill on Friday afternoon with excruciating abdominal pain that was later diagnosed as kidney stones and prevented him from taking to the dugout at Pittodrie.
Thankfully for the gaffer he was released from hospital at 2pm and in time to ensure he was able to watch the game and keep in constant dialogue with assistant manager Marvin Bartley who was himself banned for the game with coach Neil Hastings in the dugout.
But a 2-1 win against the Dons, which all but secured the Lions a fifth successive top flight campaign, proved to be the perfect tonic after his health scare.
He said: "I honestly crawled into A&E with tears in my eyes. The pain was incredible. I was genuinely on all fours, I didn’t know what was happening.
“I was sweating, I was white, pins and needles all over my body. I went in at 4 pm and I was on morphine til 8 pm and it wasn’t working then the MRI showed I have a stone so that’s when I was diagnosed.
“Once the pain relief kicked in I felt brilliant. Since then I have been brand new. It’s sore but it’s manageable."
He added: "I managed to get out of hospital at 2 pm. I told the club to send me a link and I phoned Marv, and I was on the phone for 89 minutes of the 90.
“I was still changing things. I made the substitutions by phone and I spoke to Marv to get his thoughts. Marv said his phone ran out of juice but I think he just ignored me. I had a better view of the game than they did, without the emotion. It’s not the same, you can be a wee bit more controlled - or maybe that was the meds.
“We made it work. Marv was brilliant, Neil was brilliant, the boys were brilliant.”
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