What the NHS means to us
AS hundreds of thousands prepare to march in London next week in support of the NHS, five Mirror writers share their very personal stories...
COLEEN NOLAN
The NHS has been invaluable for my sisters and – touch wood – is saving Linda’s life on a daily basis.
I’ve had three sisters with breast cancer – Linda, Bernie and Anne.
Sadly, Bernie didn’t make it but maybe none of them would have without the NHS. That’s why it breaks my heart to see it struggling the way that it is.
After Linda fell and broke her hip – when they then found the cancer – she called an ambulance.
They said it would be four-and-a-half hours and the only way they could send one sooner was if she was unconscious.
So my brother and sister took her, screaming, in a taxi.
My paramedic friend says the stress is immense. It’s the same with all the NHS doctors, nurses and workers.
They just want to do their jobs but they can’t. Something needs to be done.
ALISON PHILLIPS
As I lay on the hospital trolley, watching the ceiling tiles whizz above me, I could think nothing more than: “So this is what an emergency feels like.”
When, a couple of hours later, I woke from an emergency caesarean and held the baby who’d barely had a heartbeat minutes before, I knew: “So this is why we need our NHS in an emergency.”
Arriving to have my third child, I’d felt relaxed. But when a nurse found the baby’s heartbeat was failing, that feeling became stone cold fear.
The speed with which the team at Queen’s Hospital in Romford got me into a theatre was extraordinary.
The next few days were an eye-opener into the strains on nurses trying to keep wards running.
In a crisis – which will make or break our lives – our health service is the very best. We should guard it with our lives.
PAUL ROUTLEDGE
I would not be here now were it not for the NHS.
My London GP, Dr Soo, saw the warning signs and told me: “You need a dramatic change in your way of life!”
That was almost 15 years ago – and he was right. If I’d carried on burning the candle at both ends, and sometimes in the middle, I would have been a goner.
Since then, I’ve valued the NHS like a saviour. My new GP and the doctors at Airedale General Hospital got me through a long prostate cancer situation, and may have to again.
My latest treatment, for a fractured shoulder bone (the humerus, but there’s nothing funny about it), broken in a fall while walking on a canal towpath, was first-rate.
The NHS is all about getting you better and keeping you that way. I have faith it will keep me going a lot longer.