LOVING OUR NHS - Today's chapter PLEASE READ

Below is something I shared on Facebook. ONLY ONE PERSON JOINED. 

Do love or do you not love our NHS ?

HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE OUR NHS ? In 2019 I was setting up two projects with the then chair of MK Hospital. However, the pandemic ended both. I set up this Facebook Group; https://www.facebook.com/groups/424858988388705/ to promote both but never invited anyone to join. I am thinking rather than continue to let it be dormant we could use it to show LOVE & SUPPORT to our local NHS, to promote supporting charities and such activities as blood donation. IF YOU LOVE OUR NHS WOULD YOU JOIN ?

So here is today’s chapter.

On 13^th May 2020, a few days short of the third anniversary of her death, I published on Amazon my book Our Rebekah A Love Story From Our NHS. I have been a strong and I hope vocal supporter of our National Health Service since Beck was a small child. This second book now shares in great detail my love and the debt my family owes to the NHS, a debt we can never, ever hope to repay.

Now the overdraft of that debt has been significantly increased. I am ill. I am not looking for sympathy in so saying but I am hoping Rebekah’s story and my own story may bring others to the level of love to which I aspire.

A few years ago I became a vegetarian. It was not a conscious decision, I drifted into it but now I am passionate and would rather have the flesh torn from my bones and fed to a crocodile than eat even a packet of meat flavoured crisps. I will eat eggs and milk in cooked products but not on their own so with that exception I am in fact Vegan. At the end of 2021 this dramatic change in diet saw me being diagnosed as vitamin deficient, the chemical equilibrium in my body was out of balance. I received, as I will later explain, beautiful care and treatment but now I guess I have some kind of eating disorder where food is a punishment and not something to be enjoyed.

The body can go chemically out of balance and so can the mind. Writing as I am now in early April 2022 I have been diagnosed with some form of mental illness. Call it anxiety, call it depression the fact is I am going through some kind of minor mental breakdown. It is like I am in a long dark tunnel, I know there is a world on either side of me but I am frightened of it coming through the walls of the tunnel. There is, I assume, a light at the end of the burrow but my tunnel twists and turns so with light not being able to see round corners I do not see an end to my present situation.

I am on medication but it is not working. I had a meeting with a truly lovely, wonderful doctor at my GP surgery, well aren’t all doctors truly lovely and wonderful, who asked me a series of questions to give the diagnosis.

As someone who has always been very active, pre-pandemic I was working an average of sixty hours a week with voluntary projects, now I really do not want and do not feel able to do anything. Working with vulnerable people I used to say that everyone suffered mental illness to some degree or other. Now I understand what a ridiculous off the cuff and empty remark that was.

My mother-in-law suffered severely from Alzheimer’s Disease. Before she died she looked me in the eye and said, “I am frightened.”  Behind the dark cloak of her exterior she was there and desperately trying to look out through the fog. That is how I am feeling right now.

More than time for me to explain in writing these words I AM NOT LOOKING FOR SYMPATHY !

I came up with the idea to write this book as a sequel to Our Rebekah A Love Story From Our NHS many moths ago. Within my thinking it went through a variety of genre changes until I finally decided I was not well enough to undertake the work. More than twenty-eight thousand preliminary notes were going to be thrown away and forgotten. However, the night before I am typing this rather feeble introduction I had a dream which told me I should write the book and write it as a form of therapy to straighten out my tunnel then I could aim for the light at the end.

Do you believe in god ?  I don’t but I do believe in a force incomprehensible to any human mind which I call Destiny, Madam Destiny. Last week my family doctor retired, he is a lovely special person who has served my family, in particular Rebekah, for many years. I sent him a retirement gift. Today I received a truly lovely card and letter from him. Thank You Doctor Hilmy, Thank You Madam Destiny for bringing me to the point where I am not abandoning this project but lifting it up to celebrate our NHS.

When Our Rebekah was published we were in the early stages of the evil pandemic imported by the whole world from China. People were singing praises for the NHS, clapping on their doorsteps and putting up notices. Here today and gone tomorrow praise !  With the pandemic far from over no matter what any politician may tell you it is still here and people are passing away every day, families are suffering and to my way of thinking not receiving the love and support society should be wrapping around them. I believe that my book was the biggest celebration in 2020 for our National Health Service but I could not get the media to take it and use it to show love for the wonderful people behind those three letters N, H & S.  While our local newspaper did give its support the BBC and all orbiting around it picked out media puppets which I would suggest were not representative of the stories and love I was trying to share.

Will this sequel be received in a brighter light ? I would like to hope so. If that light guides me to the end of my tunnel then I will be happy. If that light leads just one single person to genuinely invest love to the amazing, beautiful people who work within our National Health Service than I will be happy.