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A free continuing professional development workshop for healthcare professionals exploring different ways that complementary approaches to wellbeing can enhance the patient's stay in hospital and their care in the community.

Date: Friday 25th February

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As society has evolved in Britain, and particularly since the introduction of the NHS in 1948, our health is seen to be ‘owned’ by the medical profession whom we go to ‘to be made better’. Consequently the experience of illness or disease is often a frightening sense of loss of control, dependence and powerlessness. We see it as a negative thing which happens to us, and which needs to be taken away from us by someone else. Sometimes our upbringing or even our culture leads us to believe that we are incapable of dealing with our own health problems. I think the medical profession has contributed to that belief, particularly between the 1940s and 1990s, so that many of our older generation never ask or question any medical opinions.

Medical professionals created their own language to make sure we didn’t understand, and their own systems to confuse and bewilder us. Perhaps it wasn’t deliberate, but it did set them apart from the rest of society. They must be very clever, because only they understand what is going on – and it takes them many, many years to qualify too. So a mister becomes a doctor, and a doctor becomes a consultant, but that makes him a mister again?

Although we’ve appeared to move away from the hierarchy of timid but angelic nurse, terrifyingly strict matron, & (generally) male doctors that were arrogant in their approach to everyone else – particularly the patient – medics have now made use of technology to confuse and bewilder the ordinary folk yet again. Once again, the medical profession has created another team of professionals who use that technology and their specialist language to set themselves apart from us. And ofcourse this technology generates endless paperwork, recorded policies and procedures – and why – to justify their existence, to prove to other people that they are needed, or just because they can?

So here I am, tootling along in 2003, happy with my life, my family and friends, my career, etc. when technology calls me for some routine tests. Feeling fairly healthy I obey the call one Thursday, but this leads to a totally unexpected diagnosis of Stage 3 cancer the following Tuesday.

Hang on a minute. I’m feeling fine.

Have you made a mistake? Got the wrong file?

How could I be OK when I left home this morning, but now be facing surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, nausea, vomiting, baldness, dependency, months off work, loss of income, loss of job, maybe loss of life,

… and telling my husband, and the kids, and mum and dad.

Oh it’s OK. You’ve all had a meeting about me.

You’ve got an MDT, but it doesn’t include me.

So you’ve used the test results, the formulae, the prognostic index and worked out what my cancer journey will be, and which route I’ll follow, and now you’re telling me about it as if I’ve got a choice.

And I have to appear grateful, and be strong, and you’ve even got someone to hold - my - hand - and - talk - to - me - very - slowly while you look concerned and kind.

I came to hospital on the bus today, but it might as well have been a spaceship because I’m certainly in a very different world now.

So do I close my eyes and ears and just put myself totally in your hands, or do I try to learn the language of medication and treatments just to prove that I’m being strong and not giving in to it?

And so the journey begins, and I try to play the game.

And they are kind, and they smile, and reassure, and hold my hand and say they are sorry as they do unmentionable things to me.

And to make me better they first have to make me worse.

But it’s OK. They don’t mean it. I just have to play the game.

And everything is unpleasant.

And everything hurts.

And no matter how much they try to treat me with some respect I still lose my dignity, my modesty, and sometimes (in the middle of the night) even my will to live.

And I think surgery will take it all away and I can start again, but it isn’t as simple as that. And I think chemo will kill it off, but it isn’t as simple as that.

And then I think Tamoxifen will stop it coming back, but it isn’t as simple as that.

Then I learn the awful truth about secondary cancer - the threat that is going to hang over me for years and years to come.

And they are kind, and they smile, and reassure, and hold my hand and say they are sorry as they do unmentionable things to me.

And everything is unpleasant.

And everything hurts.

And no matter how much they try to treat me with some respect I still lose my dignity, my modesty, and sometimes (especially in the middle of the night) even my will to live.

And I hate my body, with its swelling and lumps and scars and missing bits. And I hate my bald head and blackened nails and bleeding gums and collapsing veins.

And I hate the drips, the monitors, the bleeps in the night when the bag needs changing.

And the lady in the next bed just cries all the time, but me, I play the game.

I’m battling cancer. I’m so brave.

Then she’s gone, that lady in the next bed.

If she’d been brave she could have lived for three months, but she gave in and just cried, so she just lived for three days.

And I want to live for three days.

So I cry and cry.

Pull yourself together they say. Think of your husband. Think of the kids.

And I do just that … I don’t want to be a burden.

And they are kind, and they smile, and reassure, and hold my hand and say they are sorry as they do unmentionable things to me.

And everything is unpleasant.

And everything hurts.

So I cry and cry, and just want to die.

So they send me away. Respite they say.

But I know it’s that place where everyone dies.

And He’s much taller than me, that *statue hanging there on the wall,

With his arms open wide, saying just come inside.

And the Ward it is empty. The patients have gone

to do painting or baking or sit in the sun.

And I watch in amazement as a child skips by,

with a balloon for her granny who’s not going to die.

My bed it is comfy, the quilt fresh and bright.

It’s really quite nice here. I might stay the night.

But I flinch as the staff come, what will they do?

Is it needles or tablets or chest drains for you?

But no, they don’t ask that. They just want to chat.

It’s Easter next weekend. Will you decorate a hat?

Then they notice my hands with the nails hanging off.

Don’t worry. We’ll soothe them. We can fix that.

Just make yourself comfy while we dim the lights.

A candle or two will make it feel right.

There’s music and warmth, and gentleness too,

as she spreads on the oil and works it right through.

Then her hands through my hair, and caressing my face,

and the oil smells sublime and my heart starts to race.

Just rest and relax now, is all that she says as she loosens

the tension in my shoulder blades.

And I’m flying and floating and free as the birds

with no stress and no tension and nothing that hurts.

I snuggle down in bed but doubt it’s alright

to drift off to sleep though it’s not even night.

Just rest now, she says, it’s OK to sleep

then when it’s tomorrow I’ll massage your feet.

So they come and they go, day after day.

They caress and they stroke, and they brush and they knead,

and from all pain and tension I’m gradually freed.

And I can say when, and how far, and now stop.

I’m back in control and I won’t give that up.

And I cry, but for joy when my body is sound

and my mind it is clear and I’m staying around.

And I’m eating and talking and sleeping at last,

And painting and baking and cutting the grass.

My body’s still wrecked but the pain isn’t bad,

and I’ll go back for respite without feeling sad.

Cos they’re gentle and soothing and really quite kind,

and whatever happens, the decisions are mine.

Cath Sorsby (2011)

(* The statue of St Luke)