A Love Letter to the NHS

February 14, 2007 | Filed Under A Brooklyn Lad 

I used to believe all the hype about how bad Britain’s National Health Service was. That was until I went to an American hospital and saw what top dollar bought you. Not a lot as it turned out. My friend just sent me this article written by Anthony Wilson who is currently fighting cancer. He is the guy who set up Factory Records (Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays etc). I was sorry to hear about his cancer and moved by this tribute to the NHS. I’ve posted the entire article below:

Mr Manchester: My cancer battle
Anthony H Wilson

WILSON at home yesterday.
AS I was lying in my hospital bed in the M.R.I. in early January I realised I had to write something about this experience. Not about what a big operation I just had; though you should see the scar, a long horizontal from one inch above my belly button right round to my side. Nor about the bizarre wonders of modern surgery; when they took the bandage off I was horrified; “staples, 34 ******* staples, did you get them from Staples?”
“Shut up Tony,” said doctor Steve, “only the very finest titanium for you.”

And then there’s the way they remove said staples. Yes, it’s a hand held gizmo like the one that removes staples from papers. Thought you should know.

But it wasn’t these stories of modern science I wanted to relate. I wanted to write a love letter to the NHS.

Yes, that much debated, much moaned about and always criticised thing called the National Health Service.

As my mother, a Daily Express-reading dyed in the wool conservative used to say (her devout Catholicism could not be submerged) the NHS is the greatest glory of this Nation. And it was and it still is.

Hope

I am proud to recall that on my last day presenting BBC North West’s Politics show, two weeks before Christmas, I chaired a mini debate between an MP and GP on the subject of the NHS. When the show was over and as we were leaving the studio, I commented to these two gentlemen, “strange how everyone has a complaint about the NHS except for people who actually use it; when you actually come face to face with its care and concern, it is little short of wonderful.”

I was thinking of how dear old Hope had looked after my dad in his final days; little did I think that two weeks later I would be marvelling at that care and concern myself.

It isn’t just the skill and dedication of all the NHS staff; it is the simple and constant delivery of kindness, from the nurses and nursing assistants on the ward. It is shockingly wonderful and I know that for all the bad headlines the NHS gets, this is the prime experience of those who get ill and actually use the NHS.

‘Wonderful people’

Lying in bed after my “radical nephrectomy” I found myself humming that old Leonard Cohen classic, “The Sisters of Mercy”; I’m sure he didn’t write it about the team on ward 7 but if I can get to him (we are kind of old friends) before he plays Manchester on this year’s world tour I will try to get him to dedicate it to the wonderful people who looked after me so well.

Carmen, and Emma and Emily and then the other Emma and Michaela and Beryl, and so many, many people to say such a thank you too. Kam who frequently did the night shift on my ward. Most nights I would wake up with a night fever having sweated so much my gown and sheets were soaked with what by then was cold water. All it takes is a press on that “Please Help Me” button and within minutes they would have me in changed sheets and gown, dry and comfortable, feeling like a new person. Feeling infinitely grateful.

And then there’s the other lot, the doctors who have helped me through all of this.

It begins with Doctor Cath. After two months feeling like **** and presuming I had a bad cold or flu and it would just get better, I suffered two weeks of incessant nagging from my partner Yvette, who finally gets me to go to my GP, the Docs, on Bloom Street on the Tuesday before Christmas.

It then takes Doctor Cath just two minutes of tapping on my chest and in particular the back of my chest - how do they do it - to tell me I had something seriously wrong in my right lung and that she was sending me for an immediate X-Ray. Interesting.

Turned out I had six litres of yellow gunge in said lung and so it was off to Doctor Chris and hospital to have my lung drained; “he’s a respiratory surgeon and the best” says Cath.

And so I have a cat scan and a drain shoved into my back and into my lung which drains the yellow stuff.
‘Consumed by cancer’

And later that night, approximately ten o’clock (these folk work late) Doctor Chris turns up for our second meeting and sits on the edge of my bed. It’s when he puts his hand on my knee before talking, I know what’s coming; “Tony, your cat scan reveals that your right kidney is completely consumed by cancer; there’s no saving it and will have to come out. But I’m sending you to Doctor Steve who is a kidney specialist and who did my kidney when I had a problem and who is the best in the country.”

It’s like a series of high quality references all dedicated to doing the best for you. And Doctor Chris ends that night by trying to comfort me with the thought that one of his in laws has kidney cancer and is still around fifteen years later. Well it’s a thought. And for your skill, concern and kindness, my thanks.

So now it’s the 2nd of January and I’m off to the MRI; and the world of Doctor Steve. I’m not going to say too much about Steve or I’ll sound lovesick. A bedside manner that says, like Jesus to Lazarus, you will get out of this bed and be well; a confidence that radiates to all his staff, junior doctors, nurses, ward assistants - they respect him because he respects them - and most of all to his poor bloody patients like me.

Again I’m getting the best, the absolute best and it’s free ’cause this is the UK and this is the NHS and why are the only headlines we see so negative.

Doctor Steve is pleased with my progress, and slightly self satisfied with the incredibly neat scar which does a perfect, incredibly thin, horizontal straight line. Three weeks being tended with such care and professionalism in the MRI and then it’s home for further recuperation and the next chapter in the adventure; this time it’s Professor Robert at the Christie, the recommended main man who will do what he can with what remains of my cancer.

‘I’m impressed’

I like to think I’m not easily impressed but, heavens, I’m impressed again. Another medical man who exudes knowledge and confidence.
It’s early February and on our first meeting Prof Robert explains to Yvette and I that I can have normal chemo, Interferon, but that there is an even better drug that’s just come through tests and has proved even better in the short term at combating kidney cancer.

But there’s a problem, the NHS hasn’t approved it yet and you’d have to pay and it’s incredibly expensive.
It’s called Sutent and costs the individual approximately £3,600 per six week cycle and God knows how many cycles you’d need .

Yes, it’s that drug that caused all the problems the other week for the poor man who went on the news to complain about how much it was costing him to stay alive. So there’s a complaint about the NHS, not the doctors or the nurses who seem to me like the agents of God, but the bureaucrats who can’t get their act together; it’s another Herceptin screw up.

A few months ago, a minister friend of mine was listening to a guest on my Saturday morning BBC Manchester radio show, Talk of the Town, when he stopped his car to hear how we were misfunding our support for autistic kids and not giving enough support to pre-teens.

On getting back to Westminster, he made a few phone calls and tells me that government policy on autism may now change.

I don’t know who’s reading this but can someone get the NHS to get their act together on a drug that tests show saves lives. Now. It’s called Sutent and people need it.

Intense

The Prof also told us that there was an even better drug but it was very intense and only worked on certain forms of kidney cancer.

At that very moment a lady scientist elsewhere on the site was doing a biopsy-thing on my kidney to see if my cancer was the right type.
“You’ve still got my kidney. In a jar - good heavens, I’d have thrown the nasty thing away.”

That afternoon, the Prof returns; good news, my cancer has the markers which say that Interleukin 2 may work so that’s what we’re going to do. It’s two five day spells in Christie’s, a fortnight apart, a “Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter” that goes in your arm but then right up into somewhere else, and a menu of “possible side effects” that reads like your worst nightmare.

Yvette and I quite like the irony that the worse you feel, the more good is being done.
But what the hell. I trust the Prof and that’s been the same story from my first trip to the Docs on Bloom Street. Trust and absolute confidence in the employees of the National Health Service.

Hey nonny no.

And while I’m quoting Shakespeare my greatest help in these adventures, apart from my two children and my partner Yvette, has been my favourite lines from Hamlet, the “Readiness is all” speech.

Thanks, Bill.

And thank you, thank you, thank you, the dear NHS.

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