noun: nurse; plural noun: nurses

 

A person trained to care for the sick or infirm, especially in a hospital.

"a team of doctors and nurses"

 

When I was a growing up in the 1970’s, most little boys wanted to be astronauts or train drivers and most little girls wanted to be nurses.  However, my mum (along with many other immigrants of that era) was a nurse in the NHS and she worked at a notorious mental institution called Claybury Hospital. 

 

This was a proper Victorian establishment, where many people were sent to and never came out of.  The patients weren’t allowed to have their own clothes and back in the day they still carried out lobotomies and used electric shock treatment. I used to be terrified if for any reason she had to take my brother and I there, with the patients wandering around the grounds asking if we wanted to see their shrapnel wounds….. 

 

Mum was so good with the patients and had so much empathy and time for them. 

 

Some of the people she cared for were violent and she’d often come home battered and bruised.  She was only 5’2” but she was a force to be reckoned with.

When we were little, she worked nights, as there wasn’t really any such thing as child- care back then (not for “normal” people anyway).  So, dad would come back from work, have his dinner and a wash and shave, and then mum would go out for her shift.

 

I honestly don’t know how she did it with a young family.  I can remember in school holidays she’d ask us to let her sleep till midday (after coming home from work at around 8 in the morning).  We never thought to let her sleep longer.  At 12 on the dot we’d take up a cup of coffee and some biccies and just expect her to be fully functional for the rest of the day, and then go and do her next shift at 8pm that night.

 

She was constantly tired and usually smelt slightly of hospitals, and consequently, from a very young age, I decided that I NEVER wanted to be a nurse.

Nursing today is quite different, but the men and women who go into this profession are a little bit extra human.

 

When you have chemo, you will be in and out of hospital all the time.  For the last 12 weeks I had to go in at least twice a week (once for my pre-chemo bloods and then again for the chemo itself).  The team of nurses at the medical centre where I had my chemo were more than nurses.  They obviously administered the drugs and looked after all of the patients’ needs.  But they were also brilliantly witty and would chat to the patients about all kinds of things which helped relieve nerves, take our minds off of the procedures that were happening to us, and make us feel like people rather than patients. 

 

I do feel sometimes like nurses are unsung heroes.  I won’t sing, as I don’t want all the neighbourhood cats in the house, but I do salute you, and thank you from the bottom of my heart.