My family is what kept me going, you know. Without them I don’t know what I would have done.

You know, like I say, there was times when I was in Intensive Care to start with, I thought, “I can’t do this.” I can remember lying there and thinking, “Why me?’, you know. Why, when theres older people, why has it got me?” I kept thinking, “Why?” like I say, “Why me?” And I did, there were times I thought, “I can’t do this.” You know, I cried with frustration. You know, I’d lie there and look at that clock going round and round.

And the days, well, the days and nights just became one, you know. You know, even when the nurses were in and out all the time, it’s not the same. It’s, you know, they became friends, yes, well, I say friends, but, yes, I suppose they were. But then they’d say to me sometimes, “If you’re tired, [name], you must tell your family not to come in.” And I used to say, “I can’t, because they are my rock.” Without them, unless I see them because then I think, “You’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to keep going” you know.

The Sunday she [mother] came round again, she cooked and she cleaned, for the whole week she basically was just in and out of here as well as what, my Dad had travelled actually so he wasn’t at home. And so she came in every day and bathey’d him [new baby] and she actually missed a day. The day that she did miss my friend phoned me and I said to her, well my mum can’t come round today because she had to go to some meeting. So she asked if theres anything she could do, so I said, “Well come round and you can bath him for me.” Because although if I had to, I could bath him, I really wasn’t strong enough and I didn’t want to bath him yet.

So she came round and she bathey’d him and she fed him and he, you know, he is a good baby in the sense that, as long as you bathey’d him, you fed him, you cleaned him, he would sleep. And that’s what he did. Right up til now, that’s what he does, when you know you feed him, you bath him, he just sleeps so he wasn’t much of a trouble.

So for the first two weeks my mother was helping me. I had some friends who came round and helped me with him. I had friends cook and my husband would go pick it up and bring it home, so the family had something to eat when my mum couldn’t do anything. I had, you know, major support.

And so I slept as well when they did things like in the day, I would sleep in the day and look after him at night.

But then carers are the nurses, the nurses are your carers, and people keep saying to me and in Intensive Care literature information for patients is patients/relatives. Well what do you do if you’ve no relatives? So yes carers are very, very important and I think that the follow up has got to be for patients and carers. And this vision I have of Intensive Care is that if the patient representative is involved from the beginning, the patient representative can get to know the relatives, and friends, and carers, and supporters, whilst the patient is too ill to do anything and offer them help and say, "Well look I’ve been in that very bed, that bed there was my bed, your husbands in the next bed". Or in my bed". And you can help them get through and you can tell them what you needed, what you longed for.

And I understand that I knocked on the pearly gates a total of four times but I’m still here. And apart from the care and attention of my wife and my family and prayers from the church and friends in different bowling clubs from as far away as Australia quite frankly, I think that this has helped me get over the trauma of the operation, not that it worried me. I had a problem. The doctors were seeing to it and I just have to go along with it.

Most certainly the power of prayer. I’m not advocating that every patient sort of goes and clings to a church group or something like that but weve always been churchgoers anyway. I’ve been associated with church choirs ever since I was about fourteen years of age. But I would certainly suggest that family support is a major priority and when I say support I don’t mean the financial side or the crying side. It’s basically the loving side of the family and here again I don’t want anyone to consider that because someone is ill and just come out of hospital that everything has got to be done for them. Give them a, give the patient a chance to do things for himself. But certainly I think weve both found the power of prayer, not only in our own instance but in instances of some of our friends. It’s a weird and wonderful thing.

I think it would be nice to have a support group of people who have had the same experience. Because much as friends and relatives have been supportive, they haven’t had that experience and don’t know. And I have met a young woman recently through a mutual friend, who’s been through the same thing. And we haven’t got together yet but we have made a date to get together to have a chat. She actually had her experience five years ago, and what she was saying to me is that shes looked since then for someone else who’s been through that experience to talk to. But she would really love a support group. And shes still under a psychiatrist after five years because shes found it so psychologically traumatic. I think it will be helpful for us to get together and to talk through our experiences. And I’m looking forward to that, and I know she is. And it would be nice to find other people. I’m sure there must be lots of them. But this other woman said to me that shes looked on websites and things, and the only person she found in five years was someone in America that shes corresponded with. And I actually only live a few streets away from her. So it was just one of those bizarre coincidences that we met. But I’m looking forward to seeing her and I think it will be helpful to both of us.