Hospitals

Some people that we love are seriously ill at the moment. So I've visited a couple of big hospitals in the last week.

Do you like hospitals?

I am some sort of weirdo, because I do. I find something about them comforting. Which isn't to say I don't worry about the loved ones I am visiting, or have faith that the doctors and nurses are getting everything right.

I've got bad experiences of hospital, like most people. Watching my grandfather suffer traumatic indignities after his stroke, unable to communicate properly, left such an impression on me I'm unable to recall the memory without tears. I've seen a few pretty nasty incidents in psychiatric hospitals, for example one involving a woman and a used sanitary towel.

Is it some blind trustingness I have about greater medical authority, do I associate it with the imminent prospect of a lie-down (my last few trips to hospital on my own behalf have been for back or hip procedures, and quite frankly have been a nice break from childcare, combined with thrilling pain relief) or is it to do with my lifelong obsession with ER?

Whatever it is, I'm lucky that it's not me in there, getting a terminal diagnosis, or watching over my beautiful, ill baby.

They're like different worlds, hospitals. In different time zones, with different rules. Microcosms - well, giant ones - that feel like they even have their own climates. (Although one of them did have a Marks & Spencer in reception, which was a bit like getting to the International Space Station and finding a vacuum-packed branch of John Lewis behind one of the doors.)

But boy, do you see a slice of life in hospitals. Like alcohol, they are the great leveller. Pain, nausea, worry, frustration, sympathy, love, gratitude; all the things that make us human, that make us the same, come to the forefront.

Waiting for a lift in a busy hospital is an interesting experiment in observing all these traits. What is it with big hospitals and those multiple lifts that still take forever? It's like waiting for a tube in rush hour: inching towards where you think the doors are going to open, furiously judging people who don't seem to be obeying the rules.

Except this time you're also assessing them for signs of visible injury, listening to their conversations to see how urgent their visit is, trying to decode whether that angry look on their face is because they're worried about a relative or because they're just an unpleasant person. 

We all get ill, but serious situations are very different. When it's someone that we care about, we try to imagine their world. We do little things to make hospital more homely, and attempt to work out what they want to hear. But how can you really put yourself in their shoes? You're not walking those long corridors in the night.

I wish there was a universal guidebook about how to support people best. How to be there usefully, unobtrusively, whenever they need us. My motto is: be positive, listen rather than talk, and above all, do not complain about your own trivial problems. Because hospitals are a big deal. This is not ER.