Tendring Topics……..on line
‘Thank Christ….for Easter!’
I don’t think that we would be particularly surprised if we saw that message on a Notice Board outside any church or place of worship this week. Yet that message, with the addition of ‘Bank Holiday’ after ‘Easter’ and accompanied by a caricature of a smiling and beckoning Christ, wearing ear phones, outside Tom Peppers pub on Clacton’s Marine Parade has caused outrage among many Christians, including the Bishop of Chelmsford.
Well, I have to confess that when I first saw it, I too felt outraged. Jesus Christ’s name was being used blasphemously and his image was being exploited to encourage irresponsible boozing! Disgraceful. But was it? A chat with friends wiser than I am and with a Christian faith firmer than mine, made me begin to think otherwise.
The poster did at least acknowledge that Jesus Christ had something to do with Easter. The further, admittedly tasteless, advertisement for a vodka drink to bring yourself back to life even suggests that the author of the advert was acquainted with the fact of Christ’s resurrection.
A couple of pages after the report of this ‘outrageous’ poster and the Christian reaction to it, the same Clacton Gazette had nine pages of Easter Extra full of adverts for Easter activities and commercial services. There were advertising features extolling the attractions of Clacton and Holland-on-Sea over the Easter holiday, the beauty of the nearby bluebell woods, and so on (I have written advertising features like that myself in my time!) but not a single word about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nor was there even a whisper of the possibility that going to church to ‘thank Christ for Easter’ was among the ‘Things to do in Clacton at Easter’.
I reckon that fundamentalist atheists like, for instance, Professor Dawkins, who are always eager to spread their unbelief, would derive far more satisfaction from those nine pages of Easter Extra that studiously avoided any connection between Easter and the Christian Faith, than from the poster that, however crudely, brought the reality and importance of the Easter story to the attention of us all.
An insult to Jesus to suggest that he had anything to do with pubs and the kind of people who use them? Hardly; tradition asserts that he was born in a stable at the back of an inn. He was, so he told us himself, accused of being ‘a glutton and a wine bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’. The God whom Jesus revealed to us does not tell his followers to seek out and punish those who insult him. On that first Good Friday Jesus was subjected to far more abuse, insult and wanton cruelty than the rest of us have to endure in a lifetime. His reaction was to pray: ‘Forgive them Father. They don’t realize what they are doing’.
I think that Christians should thank the landlord of ‘Tom Peppers’ for having, however inadvertently, brought the true story of Easter to the front page of a local newspaper that would otherwise have ignored it.
Nursing care?
Some weeks ago I mentioned in this blog my late wife Heather’s brief and unhappy stay in the Kate Grant Ward of Clacton Hospital in 2004. She had fallen, broken a hip and had had it repaired at Colchester General Hospital. She had then been sent to Clacton Hospital for rehabilitation. I had known at about the time her ambulance would arrive there and, when it arrived, I had my introduction to the situation that prevailed there!
The ambulance driver pushed her, in a wheel chair, into the Kate Grant Ward and up to the empty bed prepared for her. There were no nurses there to receive her and get her into the bed. After waiting for about ten minutes the driver said, ‘I’m not supposed to do this, but I can’t leave her sitting in that wheel chair after that long drive. I’m going to get her onto the bed’. And so he did. He was strong and my wife was very light so it was no problem. Eventually of course a couple of nurses did turn up, very kind and helpful, and she was properly admitted.
That summed up all her subsequent treatment. The nurses were kind, hard working and thoroughly professional – but there were not enough of them. With a ward full of more-or-less immobile elderly ladies there was almost always at least one of them needing urgent attention and often more than one. The result was that it took well over an hour to get them settled at night and even longer to get them up, washed, dressed and ready to sit in their bedside chairs, in the morning. Alarm bells often went unanswered and patients were catheterised (and became permanently incontinent as a result) simply because it avoided the need to supply a bottle or bedpan, or to help the patient to the toilet. It was a great relief when I managed to persuade the Ward Sister that I was well able to care for my wife myself at home, and we bade the Kate Grant Ward farewell.
My wife’s experience pales into insignificance compared with that reported of Carol Carr of Dovercourt. She is a sufferer from Multiple Schlerosis and has paralysis down one side of her body. She was admitted to Colchester General Hospital with a persistent urinary tract infection. A report in the local Daily Gazette records that, ‘Her husband Dennis said she was left initially without food and drink for eight hours while waiting in the admissions area. Once properly admitted to hospital, he claims his wife was left lying in her own faeces for more than six hours’.
Mr Carr says, ‘The conditions in that hospital were atrocious. My wife’s carer and myself found ourselves having to do stuff for elderly patients. Bells were going off and being ignored. It’s so infuriating to sit there and watch this going on. To have it happen to a member of your own family is appalling……..there are good people there, good nurses. But they just don’t have sufficient staff’.
Mr and Mrs Carr have made an official complaint that is being looked into as a matter of urgency by the hospital authorities. Whatever the outcome of that enquiry though it is obvious to me though that there is an acute shortage of nurses ‘in the front line’, a shortage that I had noted in Clacton seven years earlier
And now it seems, Government cuts mean that there will be even less of them!
My own ‘Close encounter’ with the NHS
I was sorry to hear of Mrs Carr’s experience of the NHS and of Colchester General Hospital because, almost at the same time perhaps, I was having a wholly different and, for the most part, wholly positive experience of both.
I had been seeing my own doctor about what seemed to be a problem with my digestive system for a week or so. Then I had a very troubled night, perspiring freely and shivering at the same time. In the morning I was still trembling and shaking. Had I not been living alone I might have decided otherwise but I thought that by dialling 999 I would at least get the immediate attention of a paramedic.
And so I did. A pleasant and helpful young man turned up and examined me. He was very concerned to find that my blood pressure which, when taken on one arm was wildly different from one taken on the other. He seemed to think that that was a sign of imminent peril. He phoned for an ambulance and helped me to get dressed, urging me to do everything very, very slowly and carefully.
He must I think, have conveyed his worries about my condition to Colchester General Hospital, because when I got there I was dealt with instantly with no waiting at all. For the next hour my body wasn’t my own. A nurse helped me into one of those awful hospital gowns, I gave blood and urine samples for examination. In a hospital ‘cot’, I was electrocardiographed, my chest and my abdomen were X-rayed separately and, as I was stretched out on an ‘operating’ table, my stomach was prodded and very thoroughly examined by the Registrar.
Back in my ‘cot’, I was pushed into a cubicle to await my fate. After, I suppose, about three quarters of an hour the Registrar (a helpful and friendly young woman) turned up. She told me that those tests had revealed that I had a very severe urinary infection. It could be successfully treated with antibiotics and I could take them as satisfactorily at home as in hospital. I could get dressed and go home.
As I was about to ask her how I was going to get home, the curtain to the cubicle was pulled aside, and in walked my younger son Andy who lives in Enfield. A friendly neighbour had spotted me being carried off in an ambulance and had phoned him. He had driven down right away and had turned up just in time to drive me home in comfort.
No negative experiences at all? Well, just one. It sounds pretty trivial now – but it didn’t at the time. While waiting in the cubicle I developed an urge to visit the toilet. There seemed to be no way of summoning a nurse so, in desperation, I told someone passing outside the cubicle of my need and asked them if they could ask a nurse to give me urgent attention. I had hoped, I suppose, that the nurse would let down the side of my ‘cot’ so that I could get out, and direct me to the nearest toilet. With my stick I would have been well able to get there on my own.
What actually happened was that, after another seemingly interminable wait, a nurse walked in with one of those (paper maché ?) hospital urine bottles, thrust it over the part of my anatomy that needed it, and walked out again. It was, I suppose, an adequate response, but hardly the one for which I had hoped. However, I came to no harm and it did confirm my conviction that many more nurses are needed ‘on the front line!’
The World’s Best! – and it’s all free?
Politicians, of all political persuasions, constantly assure us that they are determined that our Health Service should remain ‘the best in the world’ and will continue to be ‘free at the point of delivery’. If they say it often enough without thinking about it, they’ll probably believe it themselves!
It certainly isn’t free at the point of delivery – unless you consider that dentistry, optical services and actually obtaining the drugs that the doctor prescribes are not part of the Health Service. I don’t have to pay for prescribed medicines because of my age. Many others are also exempt for one reason or another but for those who have to pay (as I did before I reached retirement age) the charge is now over £7.00 per item!
Is our Health Service ‘the best in the world’? I had always imagined that it was at least among the top half dozen. Lately though I have begun to wonder. My grandson, who lives and works in Brussels (The rule that gives all EU citizens the right to live and work anywhere with the EU doesn’t just benefit those who want to come to England!) is very enthusiastic about the service that he enjoys in Belgium.
And why do so many people needing hip replacement and similar surgery opt to go to France or elsewhere to have it done?
Infant mortality, including the incidence of stillbirths, is generally reckoned to be a pretty good indicator of the general health of a community. I was shocked to learn that Britain has more stillbirths per every one-thousand births than practically any other developed country in the world.
There can be few situations more heart-rending than the birth of a stillborn child. The birth has been anticipated for months – pram, cot, baby clothes have all been lovingly prepared. Messages of congratulation have been arriving – and the baby dies before birth. I am sure that only those who have had the experience can imagine the disappointment, despair and desolation of the bereaved mum and dad. If there were only one, per million live births, it would be one too many.
I don’t know why we have more stillbirths than almost every other developed country but, if I were a betting man, I would be prepared to wager that those countries with a lower stillbirth rate than us, have:
(a) A much narrower gap between the incomes of their poorest and wealthiest citizens than we have.
(b) Many more trained, qualified and working nurses and midwives per head of the population than we have.
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