Professor Green

Professor Green

Dear NHS,

Shortly after you delivered me into this world (the nurse handed me to my grandmother who would later become my legal guardian – not sure if it was intuition or just because my mum was sixteen and, despite having just given birth, looked too young to be a parent herself) I ended up back in your care and in need of surgery.

At six weeks old, one of your surgeons performed a pyloromyotomy and again gave me the gift of life.

But as grateful as I always have been for your care, I don’t like hospitals.

When I was thirteen, you cared for my great-grandmother as she slipped away, a huge life event for me. I don’t know how you find the strength to get up and go to work every day not knowing what you’re going to encounter – not just the loss of life and suffering, but the anger, the abuse (I’ve ended up in Homerton A&E on a weekend and witnessed it first-hand!), the people who don’t truly appreciate just how much you give in what you do for us mere mortals.

Over the years I’ve spent some solid time with you guys:

Two weeks for glandular fever when I was sixteen (one of your nurses asked my then-girlfriend not to sit on the bed and later accused me of cheating on her as she didn’t have glandular fever – I don’t hold it against him, I’m sure he was just having a bad day).

Two weeks for what looked like colitis but thankfully turned out to be food poisoning (campylobacter – I was happy to leave with the entire length of my large intestine and without a poo-bag).

And then again at twenty-four, when I was stabbed. After five hours in surgery, thirty-eight internal stitches (no idea how many external) and with the possibility of me not waking up or being disabled due to nerve damage, you brought me round and asked me to shrug my shoulders to make sure I still had the use of my arms. I did. Phew. When I glanced at my reflection for the first time and saw the wound, I thanked the surgeon for putting my two-week-old ‘Lucky’ tattoo back together; he thanked me – apparently it made his job easier as it helped him work out what went where!

Some ten years later I did some work to raise money for the Trauma Research Unit at the Royal London Hospital and visited other youths you’d saved from the fate I nearly met on the very same ward I woke up in. A small token of appreciation in the scheme of things.

I’ve seen you a couple of times since then as well. I was squashed between two cars on 23 May 2013 – four years to the day I was stabbed, actually! Thanks for the gas and air, and the picture – I always laugh at how my hair somehow remained perfect throughout the whole ordeal.

More recently, I saw you after a seizure during which I fell and smashed my head – I’m haemophilia B / factor VII deficient so you rushed me through for a scan to make sure there wasn’t a bleed, which there wasn’t – news you delivered much to my delight, though in your next breath you broke it to me that, despite not having a bleed on my brain, I had in fact fractured my neck. I’ve since made a full recovery.

I’m not sure if I should end this with an apology for all the time you’ve had to put up with me or a thank you for always coming through, despite being overworked, underpaid and (by some) under-appreciated. I will always rally for you lot because, unlike the many false idols (myself included), you are heroes. Real-life ones.

I’m sorry it took a global pandemic to highlight just how incredible what you do on a daily basis is.

Thank you NHS,

Lots of love,

Stephen x

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