Or an ode to every single hero, sung or unsung, of the NHS.
I am one of those annoying people who never breaks a leg, a hand or a finger; never has a cold, or if they do, they just make it go away; and never, I mean, NEVER, takes medication.
The result is that I have rarely visited hospitals as an inpatient. I did occasionally attend day clinics (also to be counted on two fingers) and I have, both in my profession and in my private life, accompanied other people to all sorts of hospital appointments and night stays.
These are radically different experiences, however: the view of the accompanying professional, the patient’s relative and the patient themselves.
A very hard job is to be the patient’s relative. Powerless, forced to experience your loved one’s fragility and not able to screen yourself away from it. But more on this matter, another time.
I was an inpatient three times:
The first time I was sixteen and in a car accident. I only spent one night in the children’s hospital near the state swimming pool in Bucharest and I remember the hospital windows, with the glass painted white and my roommate, a disabled and tenacious 11 year old, constantly coming or going to physio, who did not know her parents and had virtually lived in hospitals for most of her life.
My memory of that particular hospital is grim, but to be perfectly honest, I am not a reliable source. I was 16, read Rimbaud and Oscar Wilde, and quite liked an exacerbated reality. I have heard excellent reviews since.
The second time I was an inpatient was when I had my first child – 8 years ago almost on the dot. I spent the night and the morning in our local hospital’s maternity ward.
And the third time was last week. To cut a long story short, I started feeling really weak on Tuesday morning, but ignored it, and by the time I left work I could barely drag my feet to the station. There followed an ambulance call which was responded to by two ambulances in the space of a couple of minutes. (I know this is not the case in other parts of this country, and I am even more grateful to live where I am and even more sorrowful for one of my friends’ recent loss).
I then had a very pleasant (even though I threw up three times) ambulance journey. We discussed our children, I peeked out of the window at the IKEA towers and TGI Fridays’s flashing lights, I felt dignified, cared for, and most importantly, safe.
And I could simply copy and paste the end of the last phrase to describe my hospital experience.
The hardest, I find, are always the nights. This particular night I spent in a place ominously called ‘AMU’, or Acute Medical Assessment Unit. This is where each person is stuck on a monitor showing their heart rate and blood pressure and on a drip. Drip on the right, monitor on the left. Said monitor beeps and turns red with fear every time the heart rate goes up or down. If you are a runner, or an athlete, or if you have it in your genes to have naturally low heart rate, then you are blessed with intermittent warning beeping all night. And so are all your neighbours. Other constant noises are oxygen masks wheezing and confused screams: ‘Help! Help me! Put me on the floor. Leave me die, right here, on this very floor.’
I stayed awake. I checked my Instagram feed, a little. Tried to read, a little. Watched some You Tube tutorials, a little. But mostly, I watched blue legged feet move side-ways, across, back, forth, or whichever other way was required. Changing drips, restarting monitors, shuffling pillows, taking temperatures, calling doctors. And I remembered my ‘sleep-in’ nights at the homeless project I used to work. And I remembered being called out. And I remembered how hard it was, at times.
And yet, these blue-outfitted beings rarely stopped that night. Only a couple in a ward of 8, they were two blue angels that taught me to appreciate hospital staff, hospital realities and the humanity of the NHS a little bit more.
This is a personal story and all views my own. For more stories about me, you might want to start reading here, or here. This website is also populated with inspiring stories from other people, like this one or this one.
