When my husband was called up urgently in the evening by a consultant haematologist to come into the acute assessment...
Patient Stories
Reconstructing a different life 4
Part 4: Resumption My parents in law had decided that my wife, son and I deserved a holiday. They were taking us to...
Reconstructing a different life 3
Part 3: The garden That evening I was taken back to theatre to have an external fixator fitted to the femur. The...
Reconstructing a different life 2
Part 2: Terrified I was ventilated for 10 days. My first recollection after my “near death experience” was post extubation. I remember seeing my wife and mother in law and saying, “Hello mum. What are you doing here?” The next few days blur into one partly because I...
Reconstructing a different life 1
Part 1: a moment in time In March 1987 my life changed forever, one morning on my way to work. Everything that happened before that day is now categorised in my mind as “before accident.” Statistically I should never have survived, and I certainly never...
Recollections: taking it all in
It was a cold, bleak Sunday in January. The trees were bare, the sky colourless and the ground had that bleached look it gets when it’s cold enough to see your own breath. A grey, tired landscape, devoid of colour after the Christmas holiday. Inside the ward was a...
Re-writing conversations
The phone started to ring; a withheld number. In an instant my palms became sweaty and my heart rate seemed to double. My husband and I were on the way to visit our 8 week old daughter in hospital. Having been 'promoted' from the intensive care nursery to the step...
Re-consenting
I remember the morning vividly even though it was over 15 years ago. I was sat in a side room on the gynae ward, nil by mouth since midnight and having already changed into the impersonal, ill fitting hospital gown that I had been given. The team arrived; consultant,...
Re-defining: lessons from the other side
Being ‘on the other side’ is the most valuable medical educational experience I have ever had that can never be taught in the classroom. Having been fit and well all my life, when I started getting swollen ankles at only 19 years old I didn’t...