About three weeks ago I began to feel very, very unwell. I don’t know what was wrong with me: it certainly wasn’t a normal sneezing and coughing cold. Physically I was pretty much fine, but I felt dizzy, disoriented and not myself at all.  It lasted a couple of days and I started to get slightly concerned, so I decided to head to my local hospital to check whether anything was actually the matter with me.

It turned out that there was nothing wrong with me, and I was perfectly fine: everything checked out and I was back to normal a couple of days later. I think I ought to record, however, that my treatment at the hospital was absolutely astounding. For some reason, I was put at the front of the queue and made a priority. I was thoroughly checked over, my blood pressure taken and everything. That was quite a relief in itself, and of course it is only because we have the NHS that I could receive such outstanding treatment.

I am now, I’m glad to say, feeling perfectly normal. For the last couple of days though, the thought has been nagging at me that I should go back to the hospital and say thank you. It feels like the right thing to do, given that I received such outstanding treatment. The thing is, I don’t think I can just roll into the hospital and ask to see someone: hospitals are extremely busy places after all, with many people in need of critical help. I wouldn’t want to distract anyone from their jobs.

Thus the best thing I could do, I decided, is to write this blog entry. It was only a minor episode, and I had previously thought I would just keep it to myself. Yet if through recording what happened here I can express my deep seated gratitude for my treatment, then I really hope that the staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich know how thankful I am for their help. Above all, I find it profoundly reassuring to know that I can roll into a hospital like that and receive such help when I need it. We are all very lucky indeed to have such support.