"This will help me to return to my normal amiable self"

There are many negative stories about the NHS at the moment and so I wish to celebrate the fantastic service and help that I received from the busy team in the Medical Triage Unit at RD & E, this week following the first class service from my GP, Dr Kekwick.

Life isn't always a walk in the park and sometimes we all feel a little sad because of what we have experienced. The analogy I would like to use is walking along a disused railway track where there can be obstacles and things that make it difficult to see the way ahead. Sometimes there are cuttings and even tunnels where we stumble and fall. Hopefully very few people find themselves on the floor of a tunnel struggling to see the light at its end.

For reasons which are not appropriate to share publicly, this is where I found myself at the weekend. At 1 am in the morning I was led on my bed in my own home next to my loving wife who was fast asleep and yet I was the most scared I have ever been in my life. Later that morning the change in my mental health could be tracked in an email exchange which went from desperate and incoherent back to my normal lucid and appreciative. In the space of just a few hours I very nearly lost sight of the way forward.

It is in this context that I would like to thank my family, friends and others who found me lying in the tunnel and helped me to see the way out. In particular I would like to thank Nurse Kelsey who, in the context of a hectic ward with a doctor giving a medical diagnosis rather too loudly, found the time to listen, empathise and in an instant simply get it. This brilliant experience is even more remarkable given the industrial action that took place recently. On behalf of everyone, thank you. This will help me to return to my normal amiable, if useless [according to my wife], normal self.