I never looked after David Cameron’s son Ivan who died 2009. But colleagues did. The Guardian wrote in an editorial the other day that “Mr Cameron has known pain and failure in his life but it has always been limited failure and privileged pain.” Well, I knew this already. At the paediatric hospital where I soon after Mr Cameron’s family trauma occurred was going to do a seven-year stint as a …
Something new happening
George Bush Senior was in the white house, John Major in no 10 and no one knew what the internet was. I’d just been a week on a train and I was barely an adult. Beijing was sunny, the air cold and crisp (the smog was yet to arrive) and the streets crammed with bicycles. I’d never seen so many. Chairman Mao’s eyes looked down at me from a huge portrait on the red brick wall framing the …
Beads, beds and bonkers bureaucracy
“Have you seen patient’s bead?” “Er… Patient’s bead?” I didn’t understand. What bead? In paediatric theatre departments, beads do indeed quite commonly frequent. Usually in noses of small people. Or in ears. But now it was morning and no patients, or beads, were yet around. Still, this senior nurse was asking me if I’d seen one. “Yes?” She looked at me questioningly. …
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Gary – Patient
NHS is its people and everyone has their own life story. This is Gary's: I was born in Croydon 1962. My father was a gardener and my mother a prostitute. I remember being really small and my dad getting upset because my mother was saying good bye to him and to us.“Don’t upset the children!” he said.“I was just telling them a story of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck!” she answered, but it was a …
Fall out in Finchley.
It’s five thirty in the morning and I’m drinking my tea in the kitchen. Summer is still far off and I open the window, trying to guess the sky. The cold air makes me shiver slightly. Suddenly, there’s noise below and I peer down to see what the sound comes from. “Sorry… Do you know where number 14 is?” It’s a woman’s voice. “I’m looking for my son!” She’s standing beside the wheelie bin with a …
“I love Sweden – it’s my country!”
“David, there’s a Swedish patient in the side room – You’ll look after her!” I’d just come on my late shift and my colleagues greeted me thus. They were almost excited on my behalf, bless them. Swedes in the hospital is a very are occasion. Apparently, London has sixty-thousands of them, but I never see any. Not in the NHS, I don’t. I might hear them on the streets, but never do I meet …
