Nurse Sharon

I'd like you to meet Sharon. She's just been given a prime position in my gallery of heroes.

The wonderful IanMiller's impactEDnurse blog is running a book of nurses. Here's an excerpt from the latest, by Sharon (who's in the UK) I thought it might be too enlightening and touching for you to miss.

"Tell us a story: an amazing, funny, moving or memorable moment from your book of shifts. –

I was working in a hospice, pregnant with my second child and looking after a woman who was dying. She was the same age as I was (29 at the time) with two small boys. She was moribund, unconscious, expected to die within hours. I was fiddling about by the side of her bed when I felt a tap on my shoulder, I looked round and she was struggling to sit up, then said “I`m bloody starving, can you get me something to eat and then call my family, I want to talk to them one last time.” We all ran around like mad women getting her family together, not having time to wonder how she had just ….woken up.
Her family arrived, she spoke to them for 10 mins, called me over, said “Thanks Sharon” laid down and died.

I still feel so privileged to have been part of that. I don’t have any religious conviction and my spiritual side is still sadly lacking, but there was something “else” going on that day apart from disease and drugs, I think it was love. That one event opened my mind to accept that sometimes medicine just doesn’t have all the answers….."

Your cursor will take you to the impacetEDnurse's blog where you can read all of Sharon's post. She thinks she's a grumpy old woman. Hunh. Nonsense. As our government sets about, yet again, "reforming" the NHS, we need to tell all Sharons loud and often that they are bloody marvellous and we love them dearly. As it says on Ian's blog, "not just a nurse."

It's come to my attention that some of you are not checking Ian Miller's blog. It's sharp, thought-provoking, stylishly designed and it's not all about sutures and canella. (Whatever they are.) The bits that are about pressure, human relationships and meditative calm amidst chaos are gold. I suggest, even urge you, if you are interested in a very modern kind of profundity, to get on over there. Your cursor over my title will lead you thither.