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My father-in-law is in hospital.

As I write this he has been in for almost three weeks.

He’s 80 now and he’s been struggling lately. As often happens in older patients the balance tipped in the wrong direction – he went in and he’s having trouble getting out.

I hope we’ll have him back this week but it’s been a big blow to him.

It’s made me think, this episode, about the influences we have on people and the random acts of kindness and support we give to people and how that impacts way beyond our imagination or comprehension and how we should celebrate these things.

I met Alison for the first time just about this time of year 23 years ago. She was a few months off qualifying as a nurse and I was a Senior House Office (SHO) at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham.

It was a bit of a cliché, an SHO and a student nurse, but in reverse in our case. I was irresponsible, in particular with money, I was financially wrecked and would regularly go to the bank to get money out of the hole in the wall be declined and be declined in shops.

I wrote bouncy cheques.

I was in quite substantial debt.

If I hadn’t met Alison I’m not entirely sure what would have happened – but I think the likelihood is that I would have been a fat (divorced?) maxillofacial surgeon by now.

Instead I did and I wasn’t and i’m not.

Three years later, just about this time of year, I went to a free meeting at a Volkswagen garage in Nottingham, presented by a guy called Jack Richardson.

It turned out he was a legend and the first person in the UK to place a Straumann dental implant in the 1980s.

He knew all the old guys at Straumann.

There were probably 30 or 40 people at that meeting and there was a raffle which was free. The prize was a two-day surgical restorative course in Cambridge for the Straumann dental implant system.

I won.

I had been watching some dental implants being placed at a private practice in Uttoxeter with my Consultant from Derby at the time, Keith Jones. I would go and assist (for free) on a Saturday to help out.

I was now a VT so I went on the course and met Lisa McDonald who was the then Straumann rep for the Nottingham area (still one of the longest serving Straumann employees in the UK)

I came back from the course and bumped into Lisa again at a trade show and she sent me a quote for a ‘kit deal’ to buy a Straumann dental implant kit and motor to allow me to start placing dental implants in the practice in Ilkeston.

It was £6000 the quote, I remember it clearly.

I didn’t have the money.

My father-in-law Mike lent me the money. Without hesitation, without even thinking about it.

I bought the kit.

I guess what they say here is…

The rest is history.

But it’s still history in the making.

If it hadn’t been for that money I’m not sure what would have happened, I’m not sure where it would have gone or what I would have done.

If it hadn’t been for Alison I would have never met her dad.

Thinking backwards to these things makes it easier to thing forwards and make the big decisions because you can remember how lucky you are and what a privileged position you hold compared to the position you might have held had the cards been dealt slightly differently.

If I have ever helped you, if I’ve ever answered an email about a patient query (and I’ve done thousands) if I’ve ever taught you on a course or told you something that helped you treat a patient or posted something that made it a little bit easier or helped you on your way, it is, in part, thanks to Mike and the ripples he caused when he gave me a cheque for £6000.

His ripples continue and continue and continue way beyond places he could ever possibly know, or I could ever possibly know.

I guess (I hope) that the blog is the same.

In sharing what is going through my crazy nut it sometimes eases the path for other people because they don’t feel so isolated or so alone in the struggles that stress us all.

Some years ago, I wrote a blog called ‘The pond’ about the pond that I pass when I walk to work.

I was just inspired as I passed it one day and though ‘I’m so lucky to walk past this, it’s so beautiful’ You wouldn’t think that if you saw it but if you looked at it every day and watched the season pass by it you would think the same and I wanted to share that and I did.

Much later I was presenting at the CEREC Symposium in London at the Royal College of Physicians and a guy I have never met before or since came up to me and said “Thanks for writing about that pond”

I honestly could have cried.

I don’t know his name and I bet he never reads the blog anymore but I wonder what that ripple did and where it went from there.

It can’t always be about us and what we want and what we get, it has to be bigger than that, beyond that. At this time of year when it’s nuts and mad and time is so tight and short, it feels almost impossible to do the things that cause the ripples because you’re too busy doing the things for you but try harder.

We all must try harder because it must be worth it.

P.S. -Mitch Albom wrote a book about this once called ‘The 5 people you meet in Heaven’. It was the book he wrote after ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ (which was the really famous one)

The 5 people you meet in Heaven is the one that made me cry so hard on an aeroplane that the stewardess came up to ask if I was alright. It’s not big and it doesn’t take long but it’s worth it and you should get it for Christmas. Better still, buy it someone else for Christmas.

Blog Post Number: 1861