Angels Among The Pain

Miss me?

Over the last week or so I've seen more of the inside of a hospital than I have for many years. Thankfully, for me anyway, I've been on the visiting side of the bed, but it does mean that I've seen the NHS in action up close and personal for the last six days and I'm happy to report that I'm impressed.

Despite the media reports of an implosion and general atrophy in our fine institution, the reality as I have seen it is that the system, in our case anyway, seems to be working well.

I got the call at 9pm last Wednesday evening and hit the road to drive the 60 miles to Colchester accident and emergency where Deborah had been admitted suffering from severe abdominal pains. By 1:30am she had been triaged, x-rayed, diagnosed, admitted and I was on my way home again, having made sure that she was comfortable, or as comfortable as the circumstances would allow anyway.

As she was taken to the ward, I walked behind a porter who was pushing her bed, and for a moment while we moved silently down the long empty corridors, I felt like Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back when he is escorting a carbon frozen Han Solo to his ship.

After midnight, hospitals are lonely, quiet places, where the faint sounds of beeping machines can be heard, and I was reminded of the previous September when Deborah and I had walked the corridors of another hospital, just a mile up the road as it happens, whose corridors had been long since abandoned, but where ghosts remained in the peeling paint on the walls, in the empty operating theatres and the vandalised wards.

During the day, the hospital is a completely different animal, the sounds of movement, and conversations between doctors and nurses, between nurses and patients, between patients and visitors. The human landscape is constantly shifting too. Each time I walk onto the ward it seems that at least one of the other patients are gone, replaced by another soul in need of care.

What is constant, though, is the dedication and the kindness of the nurses on the ward. While I was there yesterday Deborah had to undergo a particularly unpleasant procedure that I'll spare you the details of, but the tenderness in the nurse's actions and words were reassuring.

I don't think I could face the suffering and the pain that they have to deal with day in and day out - I wince at the though of an IV needle - but I am eternally grateful for these men and women who dedicate their lives to easing the suffering of others. It makes what I do seem somewhat irrelevant.

So tonight as I write this I raise a glass to these fine people, and hope - in the nicest possibly way - that I never find myself in their care.