It’s easy to feel cynical about the world, especially at the moment; but this week I am amazed at the acts of human kindness in this world.<\/p>\n
One of my in-laws suffered a stroke or rather a sub-arachnoidal hemorrhage late Monday afternoon on his way home from a weekend visit with us, his family, in a car park. He is still in intensive care and still unconscious. He is old, as every medic knows, diagnosis\/prognosis in these cases aren’t so easy – balancing human equilibrium is not always straightforward.<\/p>\n
The Intensive Care Unit ain’t a pretty place, it’s a place where there is unrelenting pain and sickness. And though many of us want to die in a manner more similar to Rupert Brooke’s view of death<\/a> the reality can be very very different, as Wilfred Owen<\/a>, the poetical antithesis of Brooke who wrote about death, unflinchingly in all its sorrows; knew all too well.<\/p>\n But then there are these amazing people who work for the NHS. Who have the extraordinary gift of human kindness, extraordinary because they seem to have a super-abundance of it. They have waived the ‘visiting hours’ for us, because he is so ill and is probably their most critical patient. The nurses make us cups of tea and toast and ask every hour or so if we need anything. They field phone calls, they LISTEN, these lovely care workers listen to what ever the loved ones need to say, regardless of how banal or irrelevant. They bathe and talk to the patients gently, oh so gently, even when they are evidently asleep. They come and find us in the hospital just to tell us to not be afraid. They show us brain scans, chest X-rays, blood numbers, cat scans, MRIs, they find the doctors and techs that took them to come and have a chat. They are never snappy or sharp as I am sure I would be.<\/p>\n I have no conclusion, nor anything particularly poignant to say, but I wanted to just take a moment and express my gratitude toward those caring NHS workers who sometimes may be forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s easy to feel cynical about the world, especially at the moment; but this week I am amazed at the acts of human kindness in this world. One of my in-laws suffered a stroke or rather a sub-arachnoidal hemorrhage late … Continue reading