Your very good health

by Indy Lawyer

I’ve great reason to toast often and loudly the staff of two Scottish hospitals - Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the Southern General. In both in recent years the service has been superlative. In the former have been repeated x-rays, operations and consultations with an extremely able, highly-qualified consultant; his specialist nurse, a lady of expertise and compassion, spends her holidays in Malawi training their nurses.

My first experience of the Southern General involved learning to walk again after the amputation of my left leg. Now I attend there to try out test sockets for a new limb - that makes 13 in 4 years. I now have 2 false legs I can swap around and I have 2 false feet, one of which is bionic. My physios, nurses and prosthetist are considerate, understanding and dedicated. In the waiting room I encounter children arriving to take delivery of new specially constructed wheelchairs and patients of all ages anticipating new limbs. On the notice boards are lists of contact numbers for occupational therapists, support workers, counsellors, psychological services and money advice organisations. As I leave, there are invariably queues of hospital transport minibuses waiting to ferry patients home.

After hospital, I go back to work, because I can. Following a recent hospital visit my son told how appalled he was at my wearing his old tracksuit to my consultation, and I ribbed him about his homework then narked at him for not finishing his dinner because of his desperation to get back on his x-box. These are banal and ordinary events of everyday living, and they are so very precious when you have learned how fragile our grip on life can be. That I remain alive, active and able to be a parent, a partner, a worker, an employer, a taxpayer, is down to the Scottish NHS - that’s the universal service, free at the point of delivery, publicly funded health service, available to all in times of need.