“Long may you shine” said the nurse, after she’d taken my temperature and before taking a sample of my bloods. “No fever,”she’d said. And all of it done with the grace of a ceremony. I felt moved, cared for & impressed.
This story begins nearly a week ago when I suddenly fainted in the very early hours of last Saturday morning. Woken by the noise of my falling, Sarah’s on the phone as I’m coming round, looking worried. Within twenty minutes an ambulance is flashing in the street outside and three paramedics have gathered around me, still on the floor.
Within not very much longer I’ve been helped out to the ambulance, checked over and reassured that it’s not looking like it was either a heart attack or a stroke, our immediate big worries, and delivered into A&E at the new Royal Liverpool. Where blood tests, ECG’s, CAT scans, Telemetry, care and time are carried out until the Monday evening when Sarah comes and brings me home, to sleep sitting up while the broken ribs down my left side begin calming from the shock of the collapse and, over the next couple of months, healing.
So this morning was my follow up Outpatient appointment to all that. And a bit of a miracle all round compared to the very early hours of last Friday night into Saturday morning. An early 76 bus to the hospital, where bloods were taken and the lovely thing about shining was said. A sit and wait down in the café, then back up for reassurances from a doctor that, so far, all is looking well, there’s no underlying problem and this could have happened to anyone.
And there will be more follow ups, but essentially this is looking like the happy ending of a very short story that could be about any one of us. Which is why I’ve written it down here. Sure, there was waiting and other things along the way I could pick out and moan about. But I’m not going to.
Because less than a week after what happened I was already well enough this morning to get myself back into the hospital. To be checked out and to hear that NHS nurse say “Long may you shine.”
So thank you to her from the bottom of my steadily beating heart. To her and all the other caring humans who’ve looked after me this week. Long may the NHS shine for us all.