The NHS

A few months before my wedding, my Dad fell into a coma. It took him a week to wake up and that week was full of talk about ketones, blood sugar and brain damage. It was the most extended stay in hospital I had known him have up to that point and we were at the hospital a lot, hanging around in intensive care by his bed and sitting in the relatives’ room.

There were a couple of other patients who had been there long term. One man had been in a coma since before Dad arrived. He had a very tidy bedside; not much equipment, a framed photo of his family on the table and that’s about it. His wife would come to visit each day, sit very quietly by the bed and then go home. She had the air of someone who had been practising this same routine for a long time.

I remember the man on the other side of Dad- bearded and with a family that usually stood up when they visited (weird, what you remember). He left the ward before Dad.

There was a patient in a full body suit, into which the staff were piping air at varying degrees. I think the patient had hypothermia and they were trying to slowly get him back to the right temperature.

One evening, 5^th November 1999, a lady was rushed into the ward on a trolley and curtains were drawn around her. She had been in a car crash. Her terrified looking husband rushed in with the trolley and was then, I think, accompanied to another room. He had a small boy with him, their son. He was probably about 3 or 4.

While they worked on his Mum, one of the amazing intensive care nurses looked after that little boy. She took him to the window to watch the fireworks which were going off all over the town. I walked past them and smiled on my way to and from the relatives’ room that evening.

The little boy’s mum died; maybe an hour or so after she had arrived. His dad was in shock and a friend came to be with them. I saw them as they left the hospital later in the evening, and heard the dad’s sweet reply to his son’s question about where mummy was.

Whenever I think about the NHS, I think about the wonderful nurse who took care of the little boy while his mum was dying. I think about how many times she would have done something similar and how many lives she has made a little easier over her career; whether the lives continued or not. I’m very grateful for the example of that nurse, and for the NHS.