Ok the title of this may be a tad misleading as I am not in any way, shape or form religious, but in this recent period of lockdown and living through a global pandemic, I am unable to find the correct words to express the utter admiration and gratitude to describe our glorious NHS.

I also need to be honest about something else, the idea to write this post hasn’t come from a brainwave of mine, after all it doesn’t involve wine or Amazon. Rather it has come from being about a third of the way through the recently published book “Dear NHS” which is a collection of accounts by celebrities paying homage to the NHS by sharing their experiences of the service. The book is edited by the wonderful Adam Kay, if you haven’t read any of his books then I can not urge you strongly enough to buy them, his accounts  of being a Doctor in the NHS are both hilarious and heartbreaking all at once. Of course I wasn’t invited to contribute to the most recent book, I mean why the hell would I be? However reading the heartfelt accounts has encouraged me to write about mine and my families experiences with the NHS.

Coming from a working class town in South Wales I was obviously born in an NHS hospital, I arrived on Christmas Eve in 1972 to the sound of the Salvation Army band playing Silent Night. My childhood dealings with the NHS were the standard childhood illnesses, a nasty bought of pneumonia on my fourth birthday that saw me admitted to the hopsital I was born in, only this time it was Christmas Day, I have a vague recollection of cheerful nurses and Doctors and a visit from Santa, I am sure that all of these people would much rather have been at home with their own families, but there they were helping me to get better and dealing with my petrified parents. I do rememeber that Santa gave me an Andy Pandy glove puppet and a picture story book about a girl called Bertha who saved her younger brother from a tradegy. I also remember that Bertha of the book looked a little like me, well I was febrile at the time and Bertha did look like her mother also cut her fringe and had blue eyes. There was the standard tonsiilectomy at 7 ( I am sure that this was a rite of passage in the 70’s) Then once again the routine infections through puberty and university, mostly ENT (nothing drippy or embarrassing)

Then at 25 I became pregnant, unfortunately I also became very unwell with hyperemesis gravidarum (medical speak for throwing up morning noon and night and made famous by the Duchess of Cambridge) and was admitted to hospital for about a week, I arrived there not knowing who or where I was due to the fact that I was so dehydrated. The ever patient medics fixed me up and I was on my merry way. The rest of the pregnancy was uneventful, however the delivery was difficult and protracted, Jack entered the world to a team of experts ready to check him and ensure that we were both safe. The active labour had lasted 11 hours, the midwife that took over was a family friend, her calm and reassuring professionalism was exactly what was needed, she even remained an hour after her shift had ended to see the delivery through to the end. The fairly hideous birth left me with a bit of damage, this was also dealt with efficiently by a lovely gynaecologist (had hands like hams mind) and months of physiotherapy sorted that right out.

I have covered the early days with Jack in previous blogs so I wont go into that again, but I do have to give credit to the health visitor that took over our care when Jack was nine months old, Georgina was the first person to actually listen to and acknowledge my concerns about  Jack, she heard me and made the appropriate referrals to the professionals who would spend seven years undertaking tests and assessments until we finally discovered that Jack had Smith Lemli Opitz Syndrome. In the middle of all of these investigations I discovered that I was pregnant with Lucy, I was petrified and arrived at my GP surgery on a Friday afternoon, literally sobbing that I had a disabled child and I was pregnant again. Dr D has been our family GP since our old GP retired when Jack was a baby, he would tell you himself that he went home and worried about me all weekend, he called me on the Monday and invited me back to talk. When I say we talked I mean I sobbed again and he listened without judgement and talked me through my options. Anyway fast forward a few months and I was in the maternity ward, post anaesthetic looking at my beautiful daughter, but also panicking that she had the same unique features as her older brother. I remember a midwife sitting with me after feeding me and washing me whilst I cried, she asked me to tell her about Jack and all the wonderful and amazing things that  I loved about him. I know now that there were probably a million other things that she could and probably should have been doing, however she knew that I was in distress and needed a friend. You know I cant remember her name, or what she looked like, but I will never ever forget the way that she made me feel.

Jack is now 21 and Lucy is 16, for the past 21 years we have been heavily reliant on the NHS as a family. Endless consultants have been and remain a huge part of our lives, along with many wonderful nurses, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, psychaitrists, specialist nurses, dentists, surgeons, anaesthetists the best school nurse we could have asked for, paramedics. The list goes on. And throughout all of these routine and emergency interventions, Dr D has been there, like a safety net.

Of course all of this is free at the point of delivery. All of the suregeries, medications, help available whenever we need it, absolutely free. Free! meaning that as a family with children with a rare syndrome and very complex needs, we never ever have to worry about a whether a hospital or medical professional will accept our type of insurance, or worry about an unexpected bill landing on our doorstep after the event. I often hear stories from families that live our life, but in other countries, without the NHS. Who either have the best treatment that money can buy, or they cant afford medical care. Or worse still? They have lost their precious child and are then worrying about the bills that have followed in the wake of the utter devastation and heartbreak, these bills run into the thousands aand they are left in a hopeless situation.

During the recent pandemic we have seen our beloved NHS stretched to breaking point, we have seen countless stories of loss and heartbreak. But we have also seen stories of heroism, NHS staff working without the correct safety equipment, without breaks and without seeing their own families so that they could keep ours safe. Countless lives saved. Again, all free at the point  of delivery.

So on our first Clap for Carers, I stood on our doorstep (well ramp) with my retired A+E nurse husband, who is in a wheelchair, recovering from two lots of sepsis and a foot amputation last December and I cried. I looked at him, at our neighbours, knowing that my two medically complex children were safe and well in bed, this wasn’t a subtle cry, this was a proper bawling, snot inducing cry. A cry of relief and of gratitude.

So yes, God (or the deity of your choice) bless the NHS. We don’t know how lucky we are.