A bed with a view, p.1
A Bed with a View, page 1
Copyright © 2024 Peter W Bennett
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To my wonderful grandchildren
George, Tabitha and Emilia
“Say yes to life in spite of everything”
Victor Frankl
Contents
Introduction
1
Why Did I Write My First Book Aged 72?
2
Viva España
3
I Begin My Medical Magical Mystery Tour
4
Childhood and Primary School
5
The Bed, the Light, the Noise (and the TV System)
6
More Thoughts and Experiences from Day Three
7
Death’s Waiting Room – Daily Reflections (and the Medical Staff)
8
Nepal, Brian Goes Home (and My New, Heroic Neighbor)
9
Waterloo Grammar School
10
Friendship
11
Return to Reality (and After School)
12
The People I Met (and the Why Question)
13
Self-Administration of Drugs
14
Medical Equipment Nightmares
15
Who Becomes a Doctor… and the Power of a Smile
16
A Small Piece of Soap (…and Back Home)
17
Return to Hospital… and Carol Singers
18
Reflecting on My Hospital Experience… and Being a Scouser
19
The OPAT Team and Back to Hospital
20
Home Again and Return to Hospital (January 16th to 20th)
21
Liverpool, My Career Prospects
22
Send in the Clown
23
The Law It Is
24
Why Does the NHS Exist? And Can It Be Changed?
Epilogue
Addendum
Acknowledgements
Introduction
This book was written a year before the coronavirus pandemic, which has shown us all (or perhaps reminded us of) the talent, commitment and heroism of our doctors, nurses and support staff. We proclaim, “Save our NHS”, but I think in our celebration and exaltation, we perhaps fail to distinguish between the people involved, who must be praised unconditionally, and the vast organization that is the NHS that employs them.
We must be realistic about all of this, and we must remember that there were problems long before the pandemic. At the time of the junior doctors’ strike, a doctor friend of mine told me, “Things must be bad for us to strike. It goes completely against our beliefs.”
Prior to the pandemic, the NHS had long been subject to criticism, in a number of books, among them: Andrew Kay’s This is Going to Hurt; Rachel Clarke’s Your Life in My Hands: A Junior Doctor’s Story; Sophie Petite-Zeman’s Doctor, What’s Wrong?: Making the NHS Human Again; and Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery.
As Fareeda Zakaria wrote in his book Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World, “In October 2019, just a few months before the novel coronavirus swept the world, Johns Hopkins University released its first Global Health Security index, a comprehensive analysis of countries that were best prepared to handle an epidemic or pandemic. The United States ranked first overall, and Great Britain second. Both have performed miserably in confronting the pandemic, with their deaths per capita among the highest in the world.
There are few layman’s accounts of what it is like to be a patient. So, as the world went into lockdown, I thought that this may not be the best time to write this book, but then, talking to some of the doctors who are risking, and indeed sacrificing their lives for us, one question is becoming ever-more important – will things be better off after a pandemic? This question is particularly pertinent as the vast organization that is the NHS has revealed weaknesses that were in fact evident long before the pandemic, and I suspect this crisis will not resolve or heal these problems, but it may merely conceal them.
While I am convinced that we must – always – recognize the many individuals whose extraordinary skills and bravery have saved so many lives, we must not allow our love and our gratitude to distract us from a serious, forensic examination of the NHS’s broader strengths and weaknesses, and to do so with honesty and transparency, not least to ensure that our heroes’ efforts are not wasted.
Since the very beginning of the pandemic, we have been repeatedly warned of the dangers facing us in countless newspaper articles, such as Claire Foges’ piece in The Times of May 2nd, 2022, “Don’t let faith in the NHS blind us to its faults”, and I would also draw the reader’s attention to David Aaronovitch’s Times piece of May 14th, 2020, “Talk of angels and heroes avoids reality” and Anne Elisabeth Montet’s article in the Telegraph of May 2nd, 2020, “We French love our health service but it’s not a national treasure”.
All of these writers and many more besides are exploring what remains an urgent subject, and this book is, at least in part, my contribution to the discussion.
1
Why Did I Write My First
Book Aged 72?
Why did I write this book? I must say that, after eight drafts, many critical comments, and agents rejections, I have found myself asking the same question myself. The answer is, I think, some kind of compulsive literacy disorder. The chief symptom of this peculiar and debilitating condition is that you write a page or two and go to bed feeling rather pleased with your literary talent, only to wake the following morning, review the previous day’s output and discover to your horror that it has by some miserable reverse alchemy been transformed into the work of a not-particularly-bright 10-year-old. I can never get to the bottom of the cause for this mental abstraction.
But, in truth, the real answer to that question is rather simple. It all started with my admission to hospital with some rather complex sinus surgery. I have to say that I was not a newcomer to the medical profession having spent the last fifteen years offering up my body to a roster of medical specialists to exhibit their unique skills. I had made it to the age of 72 having undergone 25 operations, engaging with surgeons specializing in neurology, ENT (12 sinus procedures), neck, knee, eyes and hip, and had done battle with bacteria that had proved unreasonably resistant to antibiotics, and a sleep disorder which caused me to sleep during the day, rather than night, which had a seriously negative effect on my social, family and sporting life. As a friend said, “You are supposed to give your body to science after you die. You have managed to do it during your lifetime.”
Thankfully, all the surgeons had the good sense to render me unconscious to enable them to carry out their miraculous handiwork and to avoid my suggestions during the procedure. So, here I am, a former solicitor and businessman, married for almost 50 years, with two children and three grandchildren, enjoying life, in awe of the medical profession and fortunate to live in an age of extraordinary medical advances, blessed with a particular team of medical professionals of exceptional skill and dedication.
Most of my previous medical problems had been covered by private health insurance and my knowledge of the NHS was derived from listening to disingenuous politicians, hearing anecdotal evidence (positive and negative) from friends and watching the odd TV programme. I had also, as it happens, read a couple of medical books prior to this latest admission and have been a regular reader of “Medicine Balls” in Private Eye magazine. I had enjoyed both of the books for rather different reasons. Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt records the life of a junior doctor embarking on his medical career with a combination of humour, ignorance, lack of experience, anxiety, and sleep-deprivation, and the result is as funny as it is alarming and distressing. No wonder he left the profession to become a stand-up comedian. Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm comes from the opposite end of the spectrum. In each chapter, one of the world’s greatest neurosurgeons describes a surgical problem – and then the actual surgery – of immense complexity, requiring unique, ground-breaking surgical methods with the odds very often stacked against a successful outcome. Marsh is a genius, but an angry one, fulminating at the third-rate bureaucrats and politicians who get in the way of his life’s work: saving lives. A depressingly inspiring book.
So, when I had cause to go into hospital, I thought it might be a good idea to write a journal from the patient’s end of the bed. All the conversations and incidents in this book were written down in my diary immediately after taking place, allowing me to avoid distorted memories and to record my experiences accurately. However, the book turned out to be very different from my original concept of a simple, factual journal.
The hospital day – from 6am to 10pm – is stressful, noisy, sometimes painful, and the lack of sleep produces an almost hallucinogenic effect.
Long-forgotten memories of my earlier life returned like videos which appeared to calm, entertain and sustain me in this unfamiliar and distressing environment. So, a journal became a narrative and a stream of consciousness, a river of thoughts, ideas and reflections, both on my life and my time in the world.
Unfortunately, I have no recollection of my first experience of the medical profession, i.e. my birth. I was, to use the medical terminology, “delivered” on the 21st of November,1945, to Alf and Ada Dorothy (known as Ruby) Bennett. I have often wondered why the medical profession use the word “delivered”, which to the rest of us, I believe, suggests the process of sending something through the post. In my dream-like state in hospital, I conjured up a scene of Alf and Ruby making their plans:
Alf:
“Ruby, do you think we should order a baby.”
Ruby:
“I think it would be an excellent idea, although I am told that there is a long waiting list.”
Alf:
“Well, I’ve got the manufacturer’s instructions here, so let me see what we have to do.”
Ruby:
“Do we have to pay a deposit?”
Alf:
“I don’t think so, but the leaflet includes diagrams of a series of most extraordinary physical activities to be undertaken…naked.”
Ruby:
“We’re not biting off more than we can chew, are we?”
Alf:
“I don’t think so, my love, because the order only takes a few minutes to complete.”
Their baby order – me – although delayed for nine months, was duly delivered.
To my amazement, when my brother researched our births, he found that the nunnery where I was born had actually kept the detailed records of my birth, which were as follows:
Ref No. 272, Admission 21.11.1945
History of previous pregnancies and confinements –
one forceps.
Born 21.11.1945 at 5.15pm, Dr Summers
Male alive ostermilk not
Discharged 5.12.1945
Remarks: Admitted in labour. Breech extended legs & arms, delivered eerily under GA placenta complete. Normal loss and stitches. Sutures in perineum.
Why a general anaesthetic? And why such a long stay in hospital?
I have always hoped that the 21st of November, 1945 might have been a day when a uniquely large number of great and famous people were born. Disappointingly, it was a quiet day for the potentially great and good and the only person of historical interest born on that day appears to have been Goldie Hawn, the American actress. This set me wondering if there might have been some kind of celestial error, and I had in fact been destined to be recognized as a literary superstar, and she merely to be known by fewer people than would fill a medium-sized pub on a busy Saturday evening.
My parents had bought a small semi-detached house in Litherland, Liverpool, where, interestingly, the poet Wilfred Owen had been stationed in the First World War. In 1939, the developers of the estate had the foresight to line the streets with trees which gave the modest house an arboreal canopy which greatly enhanced the environment. They were cut down many years later, presumably as a cost-cutting exercise.
I say the house was small but as a child one has a very different perspective and the house was my kingdom and my workshop in which an endless childhood was spent, along with a live-in best friend, my brother, building various military establishments and assorted pieces of hardware – tanks, aircraft-carriers, bombers, submarines – from the post-war furnishings available to us. I am delighted to report that when it came to major international conflicts, we remained the dominant world force.
My father worked in a timber-importing business. In fact, he was the business, the only employee of a long-established family company selling exotic woods, some of which were used in the building of Liverpool Cathedral. Because he was a salesman, we had a rarity: a car. He worked for the same company for one week short of fifty years, having started aged 15. My memories of him have never been positive. My recollection is of a chain-smoking depressive who spoke little, played almost no part in our lives, showed no emotional connection to my mother, was possibly an adulterer, silently did the Daily Mail crossword and whose only hobby was the Masonic Lodge.
He was a genuine chain-smoker, that is he lit the next cigarette with the one he was smoking. In the evening, he would sit, speechless, next to a small desk which would contain a stock of cigarettes larger than our corner shop and guaranteed to keep the share price of his particular brand at an all-time high. He watched television and completed the crossword, and engaged in what was obviously a subconscious Freudian relationship with cigarettes. The transfer from an almost extinct nicotine assassin was a motion repeated robotically. As the extinguishing killer was about to set fire to his nose and lips, he would, without looking, pull out of the packet, positioned for easy access, and still without looking at it, the replacement lung-destroyer, which would be held briefly and tenderly as if to welcome it, and then be lit by the embers of its predecessor, placed in position, a deep breath inhaled, and then another plume of smoke would fill the small room.
My mother was also a heavy smoker, so when I had to have a chest X-ray a few years ago, the radiologist remarked that it was a miracle that neither my brother nor me had developed passive lung cancer. My brother and I have never smoked a cigarette.
As I have got older, I have tried to mitigate his apparent failings with the Christian virtue of forgiveness and a certain speculation as to why he was who he was. He had been in the navy during the Second World War and his brother, Will, had died when his ship was sunk, with the loss of 513 men. Did he perhaps suffer from depression, the treatment for which was then in its infancy? I just don’t know, but in truth I remember him with little or no affection.
