I’ve always had a desire to help people; my mum told me she always thought I would go into a caring profession. It would have been helpful if she’d said this to me before I embarked on a three-year degree in theology, but never mind.
Spending some of my childhood growing up in the Sultanate of Oman also instilled in me and my sister a strong desire to see more of the world and to experience it in ways different to just passing through on holiday.
When I got into nursing, I worked for some weeks in an HIV clinic in Uganda, which involved going out to remote rural areas to do community visits. I saw a cancer patient who had HIV as well. He was emaciated, covered in flies, with pressure sores on his hips, shoulders, elbows and the back of his head. The skin had broken down so much that his bones were visible. There was a black market for drugs; vulnerable people were given anti-psychotics instead of anti-malarials and then died from malaria. I saw evidence of witchcraft; people would wear shells in the belief that they had healing powers. It was really upsetting, but it was their normal cultural practice.
I qualified as a nurse in 2012 and started work in A&E in the same hospital I’m in today. I loved the job but I also wanted to work abroad and started to research organizations that would allow me to do this. Many cited a tropical nursing diploma as a desirable qualification so I applied to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. I ended up taking three weeks of my annual leave to go and live in Liverpool to do the course.
A friend had kindly said I could stay in the flat that belonged to his grandmother, who had passed away. His family are ordained in the church and so the flat contained the odd crucifix and piece of religious memorabilia. By this point, religion and I were not getting along. I struggle to believe there’s a god after some of what I’ve seen. It was in winter, so very dark and cold. I couldn’t figure out how to use the hot water, either. But I was there to study, and so I didn’t mind.
The course was intense; the volume of information I had to take in was overwhelming. The tutors were awe-inspiring. I really looked up to them because their life experience was incredible. They were a bit like gods for me and I wanted to be like them. I hoped that one day I would be able to be on equal terms with them and they might acknowledge me. I was young at the time and most of the other people on the course were older and had more experience than I did. It seemed everybody had worked in Mali; it became a bit of a joke to me, to be honest. Some of the attendees were really cocky and kept going on about how many deployments they’d done. Nevertheless, hearing accounts of working in some of the major global relief efforts was humbling.
We learnt how to work in disaster zones, about common diseases and how to identify, treat and manage them. I remember looking at lots of poo samples under a microscope. That was a bit unnerving – I had had tropical diseases and my poo would have been sent off to be examined and then perhaps used as a sample to help teach others like me doing the course.
After one trip to Uganda, I tested positive for bilharzia, a type of parasitic worm infection carried by freshwater snails. I had been swimming in a lake and knew I should get tested for it six weeks after I got back. I didn’t have any symptoms but was told I had it quite badly; the danger is that you can be asymptomatic and then suddenly go into multiple organ failure and die. Ed’s first question was, ‘Is it contagious?’ How loving.
Another highlight from the course was watching a man milking a snake’s glands so that it produced its venom, which could then be used to create an anti-venom. It was really odd to watch; there was a man holding a snake by its head with one hand while the other was moving up and down in what I can only describe as a masturbatory motion. All the while, I was stood right next to it, feeling very uncomfortable and wishing I could be back looking at poo samples. The whole room was full of snakes. I hate snakes. There were also boxes containing huge spiders that looked like they were being electrocuted inside because they were jumping erratically all over the place.
Never did I think then that the UK would come to be one of the worst-hit countries in the world at a time when a new virus was sweeping over the planet. After all that training and dreaming of going to another country to help, a global health emergency ended up coming to me.
In August 2018 Ed and I got married in a woodland ceremony in North Yorkshire, near to where I grew up and where my parents still lived.
My eighty-five-year-old father walked me down the aisle in a bright yellow sunflower waistcoat, jazzy tie and a top hat. Looking back, I didn’t realize at the time how precious the memory of that moment, as I linked my arm in his, would become to me. Dad obviously hadn’t got the message about not upstaging the bride but I didn’t mind. My sister and I learnt from an early age that he was a colourful, head-turning, unstoppable character. You knew when he walked into a room. ‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression,’ he used to tell us.
My husband didn’t pursue a career in healthcare; he works in engineering. I still don’t really understand what he does, and it’s part funny, part awkward when my family asks him every time they see him to explain his job.
That’s the thing about working in A&E: people can imagine to a certain extent what my job involves. In the emergency department, I see and experience everything in extremes. We treat everyone from the guy that sleeps rough in a shop doorway to multi-millionaire local sports stars and businessmen. When patients come through our doors, they are at their most vulnerable. It’s more than that, though. In A&E we are there when people are going through perhaps the worst experience of their life. We deal in emergencies and we do it well, but it’s gruesome and we can’t always save everyone.
There are countless patients I’ll never forget. And their stories are what eventually led to me losing my faith. The worst seem to take place at Christmas, which makes them even more tragic. One Christmas Eve in particular always sticks in my mind. I was working in resuscitation – the bit of the department where all the most critical patients come for life-saving treatment. Before they arrive, we often get a call telling us what to expect. On this occasion we knew it was a man in his thirties who had been involved in a road traffic collision.
The scene when a patient arrives is not one of chaos. Everything is silent – nobody talks – with only the bleep of machines and whatever noise other patients might be making in the background. Various professionals swoop down on us from around the hospitaclass="underline" the anaesthetist with an operating department practitioner in tow, the orthopaedics doctor who will assess any broken bones, the surgeon who’s there for any ruptured blood vessels or abdominal bleeding, among others.
The paramedics brought this man in quickly and told us what had happened. He had just returned from an army tour in Afghanistan and had been met at the airport by his wife and newborn baby. They were driving home together when they had a head-on collision with a lorry. The wife was killed instantly, but the baby and our patient had been brought in.
He had a blood pressure and a heart rate, indicating that he was stable for now, but we were yet to discover the extent of his injuries. He did not look good. As the nurse, I was responsible with another clinician for doing the initial assessment. I looked him over from head to toe documenting what there was to try and fix. I put an oxygen saturations probe on the patient’s finger, a blood pressure cuff around his arm, heart rate monitoring leads on his chest. I cut his clothes off and inserted a cannula while everyone else also got to work.