72 YEARS OF OUR WONDERFUL NHS

We all have so much to thank Nye Bevan for. His dedication and a belief in a National Health Service back in 1948 is how we can all access top class medical services in the UK regardless of our personal circumstances. I wouldn’t be here without it!

My experiences accessing services goes right back to my birth in 1972 when I was delivered by an NHS midwife who, soon afterwards, handed my dear Mum a bottle of Guinness to boost her iron levels and her recovery!

 I am painfully aware that my experience of ongoing pain management and mental health support is not necessarily the same across the UK yet this is a battle for another day and the government must be forced to address this. During this latest pandemic, the issues of funding and stripping back of services have at last been revealed for all to see. I’d just like to share my own NHS journey as a testament to its power and its importance as an ongoing service for all.

In 1985, whilst out playing, I was involved in a road traffic accident and my parents were advised to prepare for the worst, guided through with support from nurses and the hospital chaplain. They talked my parents through various options, listened to their fears and just sat with them when silence was all they could bear.

After a week, I was brought out of an induced coma and for two weeks was convinced I was in Nazi Germany as I couldn’t understand what anyone said to me due to swelling of my brain. I was pretty smashed up in fairness. I was closely monitored and kept on high levels of medication with heparin injections twice a day. I was convinced I was being experimented on. Apparently, I’d been learning about the second world war and the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps at school prior to my accident! I wasn’t really aware of the mental health support I was receiving yet each day I had formal or informal support and therapy for brain health and mental wellbeing. I was talked in to keeping a diary (which in fairness gave the nurses a good laugh each day) and had daily pain management support. A strict timetable of physical and mental health therapy for weeks and weeks. I recovered in time. My resilience and mental strength were certainly built through an intricate web of support through that three -month hospital stay.

My health faltered again years later in 2007 due to my childhood injuries and the NHS stepped in putting me through my paces. I was unable to teach anymore but thankfully I had two young boys by now – a huge blessing! After being told I would need to accept these changes, I had a complete breakdown. My fabulous GP and consultant saved me in my darkest moments and carried me through the mess that ensued. Counselling in the doctor’s office over a series of months, coupled with talking therapy group sessions, I experienced a shift as a carefully structured programme of sessions helped me come to terms with my grief and post-traumatic stress, giving me tools to deal with the rollercoaster of emotions I was facing day to day, hour by hour, many of which I still use.

After a pelvic realignment in 2012, Pain Management Group Therapy again was prescribed although initially I was reluctant. I was made aware early on in these sessions that I would not walk out of this course FIXED. I was not going to ‘get better’. The course of therapies would instead provide me with a toolkit to manage my life, my insecurities, my fears and the challenges I would face. This landscape of recovery placed me at the very centre. My own management of my pain and mood using these tools would affect my day to day life and effectively carry me through the next five years. This involved occasional return to services such as Occupational Therapy and counselling to help me navigate changes in life circumstances. My doctors, physios and counsellors remained on the periphery of my life, stepping in when the going almost got too much and when I needed a refresher course of my toolkit! Managing to return to teaching for four years was wonderful although it was inevitable that my health issues would eventually become too severe to ignore.

At 45, I was awarded an early Medical Retirement due to the deterioration of my physical health. I again went to pieces. I was prescribed higher doses of my meds, became very withdrawn, housebound, paranoid, anxious and hopeless.

I was given medication and coaxed through talking therapy services and although each time I felt like they were ripping the heart from my chest, I slowly began to see a life forming for me again. It took months of soul searching, tears and tissues, painful and revelatory therapy sessions and even now, I have to look back over my session notes when I feel myself slipping.

The NHS and their Mental Health Services have helped me to find a fuller, happier and more purposeful life again with my two fabulous children and my writing. I write when I’m well and I rest when I need to. I have found peace.

I am not wealthy in monetary terms. I never have been. Paying for the services that have saved my life, paying for those individuals whose world class training and support saved my mental health many times over would never have been an option for me. Their services save people’s lives, their mobility, their hearts and their souls every day. The NHS holds us when we have all but given up and enables us once more to have hope. I thank the NHS every day for stepping in and pulling me back from the brink, for giving me a life, my children, my teaching career and a quality of life since retiring that I once never imagined.