Thank you NHS
Today, during its most
challenging year in its history, the NHS celebrates its 72nd
birthday
We all have our own very
special reasons to be thankful to the NHS.
The Maritime and Coastguard
Agency’s Strategic Head of Communications Jules Morton credits the NHS with
saving the life of her one-year-old son, Sam, in January 2015.
Jules said: “It was a
normal Friday evening. I’d taken Sam and his older sister Annabelle upstairs
for a bath and hadn’t noticed that Sam was still holding a wooden spoon, which
he’d been using to bang some pots and pans in the kitchen. The kids went to play
in a bedroom while I ran the bath.
“I just remember hearing
this piercing scream. I ran in and Sam was covered in blood – he’d fallen with
the spoon in his mouth.” She rushed Sam to A&E at Dorchester hospital,
where he was treated for a gash in his throat. He was discharged the following
morning, with instructions from the consultant to bring him straight back in if
anything changed.
Jules said: “Three days
later I noticed that he wasn’t turning his head normally. Instead, he was
moving his whole body to look around. We went back to hospital and purely by
chance the consultant we had seen the previous Friday spotted us and came
straight over. She insisted that he have an X-ray.
“The next thing I remember
is being led into a private room by three people. They told me that they
suspected he had an abscess and needed a scan. They were also worried that his
airway might collapse and explained that they needed to scan him somewhere
where he would have immediate access to specialist treatment if that was to happen.”
The family were
blue-lighted to Southampton General Hospital, where Sam was taken straight to
the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit. A scan revealed that fortunately fears of
an abscess were unfounded, but Sam needed intensive treatment over the next
four days for a nasty infection, being given antibiotics intravenously every
four hours.
Jules said: “I’ll never be
able to say thank you enough to the NHS. The quick actions of that consultant
made all the difference and the story could have had a different ending if it
wasn’t for her.
“I’ll never forget the
kindness that was shown to us by the NHS staff. Sam was given special Peppa Pig
pyjamas with his favourite character George on them and we were able to stay in
the hospital’s Ronald McDonald hotel so that we could be close to him. They
might seem like small things but they made a huge difference at an incredibly
worrying time.”
#ThankYouTogether
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