Latest Blog Post

It seems I start many of the blogs of late with a description of where I am at the time that the story starts, I don’t quite know why it became like that but let’s keep with that theme for the next one.

So I’m sitting on the second to bottom stair inside my house putting my trainers on and getting ready to take the dog for a walk.

It’s about 9pm on a FrIday night at the end of a really busy week (aren’t they all?)

I finished football training with the boys at 7:45 and have only managed to have something to eat and put my son to bed before it’s time to take the dog for a walk and hopefully chill out and listen to a book for 15 – 20 minutes.

Grace is upstairs, doing homework I think and Rosie is in her favourite Friday night position on the settee in front of the TV with a blanket on.

I am tying up my On-Running trainers. They’re really cool, at least to me, and I was the first person I knew that had them. They’re for triathletes (or former triathletes) and my jeans are folded up at the bottom like Simon’s because I thought that was cool too, although it probably isn’t.

I finished tying them up and my coat cupboard is immediately to my right and in a hurry, as I usually am, I turned towards it to try and get to the door still sat on the seat.

The next thing, I realise I have smacked my head pretty hard against the corner of the wall and it’s a pretty sharp corner and I have no hair. As a reflex action I stand straight up, walk a couple of steps forward and then I’m on my hands and knees on the cream rug just by my front door.

Rosie must have heard a noise and shouts “are you ok?” but there’s claret running through my fingers onto the cream rug.

This is the second time I’ve done this this year, the first in the practice as I poked my head under the stairs to say “hi” to a patient and lifted it too hard and split the crown of my head. This one’s worse though, it’s about 2 inches long. I know, from experience of Maxfax, that scalp wounds bleed like sh**.

So it’s time for someone from healthcare to step forward and that someone is Rosie.

Rosie is my 14 year old daughter, middle child, second child with an older sister of 16 and a younger brother of 10.

Rosie wears her heart on her sleeve, has a big mouth and likes attention (no idea where she gets those traits from!!!)

She runs to me and tries to comfort me and then I tell her to get me something to put over the wound. Instinctively she goes to the kitchen and wets some kitchen roll and brings it back. She then brings me a dish towel because it’s bleeding a lot more than she thought.

Then she’s upstairs for the medicine box for the dressing and shouting at her 16 year old sister to tell her what to do.

She assumes the role of leadership in the crisis that is my split head.

Grace comes down, her 16 year old sister, she is not healthcare.

She’s clumsy and finds it difficult, she’s a little bit frightened and she tries to reassure me but it washes over me.

Rosie is completely different. She looks me straight in the face, asks me if there’s anything I need and tells me it’s going to be ok.

In the end it’s just a bang on the head but it must have had some significance because when Alison came home even she was a little bit worried about it and she spent some time dressing it with steri-strips and a dressing like only a proper nurse could do.

But afterwards you’re left with a taste in your mouth of realising that whatever path that Rosie takes it should be to help people. Somewhere along the line in genetics or development or environment or all three, she is healthcare through and through.

How do we test that? How do we select that? Because you can be damn sure we can’t bottle it and sell it.

Alison is the same, and me and Rosie and not Grace (i‘m not sure about Callum yet but I think he is) I know plenty of people who work in healthcare who are not.

If I’ve never told you about the Italian dentist who looked after Callum when he cracked his teeth then come to one of my lectures and I’ll no doubt talk about it. He was healthcare. He was the healthcare that I would like to be.

Last Friday Rosie was the healthcare that I would like to be too.

Blog Post Number: 1813