One of my worst personality traits is an in-built fear of hospitals. I hate them with a passion. It stems back to my teenage years and my twenties when my Mum was in and out of hospital having a range of different surgical procedures done. She must have had operations every year for ten or twelve years in a row I reckon.

We’d always visit her every day and each day was a supreme trial of love and devotion in as much as my stomach would churn and I’d get clammy hands as the day wore on and the moment when we set off for the hospital drew near.

It’s partly the smells – I have a highly developed sense of smell and the mingling of sickness (as you know I believe I can smell illness in others), disinfectant and those smells of various bodily functions, was just too much for a sensitive teenager to bear.

I have vivid memories of my Mum, lying in a hospital bed, very poorly after major surgery and just up from anaesthetic. I remember kissing her then sitting on the side of the bed to realise something was flopping against my leg. When I looked down, it was one of those bags that blood was draining into. I fainted. My poor Mum was really sick yet I was being ministered to by the nurses who were fussing around me. I was in a terrible mix of misery from seeing her so sick, embarrassment from the nurses looking after me instead of Mum and fear of all the tubes and equipment. My Mum, of course, was going to get better. Many people visit hospitals each day to watch their loved ones slip away from them. In retrospect, I was lucky.

Today I have taken a trip to visit my Nan, in hospital after having a number of strokes over the last couple of weeks. She’s very poorly indeed. Today is my first visit because Canterbury is around three hundred miles from home. I’ve been lucky enough to get a lift there from my South West London work base by my parents who have returned from a short holiday and were also anxious to see her.

We walked into the ward to surprise her. I’m glad I went and I’m glad of the surprise because I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen her look so thrilled to see us all. The look on her face was priceless. Nothing will erase that memory for me.

She’s (I think) nearly 89….maybe 88 and is as sharp as a razor. She’s fully aware of what’s happening to her. As she told her story of the first stroke and how she’d recognised it in herself before her doctor’s diagnosis, having seen her second husband (Pop) go through the same, she could not have been more lucid. She’s unable to walk or hold anything. She can’t eat but she can talk, if a little quietly.

As we entered the ward, we bumped into my cousin Karen and later one of my Mum’s sisters and her husband arrived. Uncle Rob is a complete joker and had us all roaring with laughter, including Nan…..especially at the story of how a fellow (male) patient in the ward was roaming around starkers after lights out a few days ago and my Nan called the nurse. Uncle Rob maintained that Nan was trying to get his attention rather than call a nurse.

Nan, through tears of laughter told of how the nurse arrived and asked Nan what was the matter. Nan replied that nothing was the matter with her but that she felt the old boy needed some help!!!

There is no ‘entertainment’ in the ward because of the ward’s observational function so my Nan, who can no longer see well enough to read, has been living in her own private soap opera. She’s got all the goss on the other patients and nurses. Dramas abound on the ward. One of her nurses, a young woman of only forty, has had two mastectomies through breast cancer and yet still carries out her duties with a smile, looks after her two children and never misses a shift.

My Nan is being well looked-after and seems much brighter and better than we’d dared hope. She has her family around her (all four sisters are regulars at the bedside as are nieces and nephews). One of my Mum’s sisters is there at her bedside each day after her own radiotherapy treatment session for breast cancer ends each morning.

Yet through all of this, Uncle David is conspicuous by his absence……..

Last year we were at Bedruthan Steps.