DAME JACQUELINE WILSON

DAME JACQUELINE WILSON

When my daughter Emma was small there was a special book she wanted me to read aloud every single night. It wasn’t The Tiger Who Came To Tea or Where the Wild Things Are, though these were great favourites. It was a little Ladybird book called The Nurse. It was a simply written, rather prosaic non-fiction book about nurses, with a picture on every page. Emma soon knew the text by heart and could chant along with me.

She thought the 1960s nurse’s uniform very glamorous. Certainly many people have a nostalgic yearning for the prim blue dress with its tight elasticated belt, starched white apron, elaborate cap and shiny black stockings, though not always for the right reasons. Emma decided she desperately wanted to be a nurse herself and played endless games with her toy nurse’s kit, taking it all very seriously.

Then one day a small friend came to tea. This child ate eagerly enough – but almost immediately was violently sick, all over herself, the table, the carpet, even the wallpaper. Emma retreated to the other end of the room, horrified, while I did my best to comfort our guest and start the much-needed mopping. I’d done the same for Emma before, never a pleasant task, but somehow it’s worse when it’s not your own child.

Emma watched, pulling a disgusted face.

‘Wait till you’re a nurse. I expect you’ll have to clear up sick lots of times,’ I said, meanly.

She was shocked. ‘Nurses don’t have to do that!’ she said.

‘Oh yes they do,’ I insisted.

Emma nodded and hid the Ladybird nurse book in the cupboard.

I’ve just been looking through a copy of it, shaking my head wryly at the dated explanations, but in some ways the words still ring true: ‘Nurses in hospital work very hard. Although the nurses may sometimes feel tired, they are always cheerful and smiling.’

Smiling is probably the very last thing anyone feels like doing in the NHS at the moment, and it’s hard to see lip movement behind a mask – but they’re certainly working harder than they ever have in their lives.

I learned to appreciate the NHS long before we knew there was such a thing as coronavirus. For the first sixty or so years of my life I was in perfect health and I’d only had brief spells in hospital for mundane reasons: tonsils and adenoids as a child, childbirth as a young woman and a small lump removal when I was around forty. I took pride in my fitness, my energy, my stamina, producing two books a year and packing in countless visits and events and long signing sessions.

Then suddenly my body rebelled. First it was heart failure, sudden and dramatic and life-threatening. I shall forever be grateful to the doctor who first diagnosed me and the medical team at the Royal Brompton Hospital. It took a little while for me to recover and to get used to my own private defibrillator sewn inside my chest, but I felt I’d got my Big Medical Drama over and done with.

I didn’t realise that my kidneys were now failing too. Within a few years I had to go on dialysis, not the most pleasant of processes, but much better than the alternative. I grew to love the gentle, efficient nurses I saw three times a week, mostly from the Philippines, the kindest and most cheerful medical staff ever.

I was lucky enough to have a transplant after a couple of years and the renal team at St George’s were wonderful, both to me and my donating partner. There was one funny moment when the young nurse admitting me needed a swab from my groin to make sure I wasn’t harbouring any bugs. I was standing with my jeans round my ankles, trying to look nonchalant, when she looked up and squinted at my face.

‘Oh my God, you’re the Tracy Beaker author!’ she said. ‘I love your books!’

It’s always lovely to meet a fan, but perhaps it’s better when you’re fully dressed!

All the staff on that unit were incredible. I have particularly fond memories of the soft-voiced star of the tea trolley, a young woman who served the food on our ward. The morning after my transplant, she came tip-toeing into my room and woke me very gently, with a cup of tea and a slice of toast spread with butter and marmalade, cut into squares as if I were a little girl. I don’t think anything has ever beaten that breakfast.

You don’t sign off completely after a transplant, so I report back at regular intervals. I have been known to fret about the hours waiting to give blood, or the endless weighing and monitoring. Never again! I’m newly grateful to the NHS, for the time and care and money they’ve spent on me. They’ve literally saved my life twice over and they’re currently risking their own lives to nurse every patient that they can back to full health.

God bless the NHS!

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