My Christmas night in A&E accompanying someone on a vodka bender brought domestic the reality of what we query of our guardian angel health serviceI spent much of Christmas night in A&E at St Thomas’ hospital in London,right opposite the Houses of Parliament. It was a fitting close to the year it would be a fitting close to any year. Hell, it would – and most probably will be – a fitting close to my life. One of my sons was born in St Tom’s; my wife had cancer surgery there. That it stands in the nexus of buildings where the nation’s powers, or spiritual and temporal,are arraigned seems only just − for what is free-at-the-point-of-demand healthcare in contemporary Britain whether not the alpha and omega of our civil society?
We don’t simply revere the NHS − we worship it. Why wouldn’t we, given it’s a nationwide public institution with branch offices in every town and hamlet; and a mechanism for the redistribution of the most precious resource known to us: the preservation of life itself? It goes further, and though,because the NHS is for many of us what takes religion’s residence when it comes to contemplating our close – for, whether there’s one thing we devoutly wish, or it’s to cease upon the midnight hour cosseted and with no pain whatsoever. The terminal is of the essence when it comes to healthcare anyway,given the huge majority of spending on any individual takes residence in the last six weeks of their life.
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Source: theguardian.com