I spent the better part of my childhood in hospital. My longest stint was nine months - eight months of which was in the intensive care unit on full life support after suffering heart failure and subsequently waiting for a heart transplant. I was 11 years old.
The nurses who looked after me throughout this time were not just my primary care givers, but my friends, confidants and family.
They were by my side at all hours of the day and night. They gave me my hourly medication, they monitored my life support machines and my vitals, they bathed me, watched me and reacted when my condition changed. But, Mandy and Debbie would also take it in turns to hold my hand all night, under the warm heated blanket when my parents had gone home for some rest.
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Jo brought me hordes of books and movies that belonged to her daughter, including the Dustbin Baby which I watched over and over again on my little white portable DVD player. Anita read me countless books on the lonely, quiet ICU wards late at night, over the sound of buzzing and beeping machines, pausing in between paragraphs to wipe my lips with a pink sponge dipped in blackcurrant juice.
Jocelyn knew that I didn’t like strangers touching my hands so when I was under anaesthetic for another procedure, she trimmed, filed, and painted my nails in a pale pink - just so I could feel more like a normal little girl again. Katie would plait my delicate and thinning hair into two French braids each time she was on shift.
On my birthday, the nurses conspired to organise a party for me, breaking the ward rules to allow a small group of my closest friends to visit me on the ICU, setting up tables with party snacks and juice for them and playing music quietly on the radio for us to enjoy.
In the height of summer, the nurses painstakingly attached every one of my machines, including the ventilator, multiple drugs pumps, chest drains, catheters and monitors to my hospital bed and broke me out of the hospital into the fresh air, wheeling me a few metres down the road to see the London Eye. Oh, we got some looks that day.
One night, I couldn’t sleep as usual so Vicki and Anita briefly turned me upside down in my bed - still attached to all my life support machines - and snapped pictures, printed them and made a poster board of the night’s adventures to show my parents the next morning.
To say my nurses went the extra mile is an understatement. And I know my experiences of care won’t be unique.
Our nurses are the lifeblood of the NHS. They deserve everything we can give them and I fully support their decision to strike.
