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| One day, maybe.. |
Part of Headway East London’s mission is to assist healthcare professionals in the training of their staff. Getting up close to survivors of brain injury, talking one-to-one, watching and listening is not something academic or technical training can easily offer. Nurses and therapists benefit greatly from the experience in many different ways, and as HEL day-service members we are happy to help.
Yesterday in a lecture theatre at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, we met ITU nurses studying at London South Bank University (LSBU): sixteen students and four HEL members. We sat in four groups of four, each for 20 minutes. We told them about our experience and answered their questions as best we can. It wasn’t easy because very few of us remember much of what happened in ITU. Most of us were unconscious and totally unaware of the nursing we got. What could we tell them? Not much.
But in some way that was OK. ITU nurses very rarely see the outcome of their work, so just to sit and chat and find out how life panned out for us after our brain injuries is enough. Several of the students raised this. Some even said they found it frustrating that they were never able to see what their work resulted in.
On this I tried to offer some crumbs of reassurance with examples from my own experience, of one nurse in particular who had somehow detected a spark of motivation in me and decided to kindle it into a bonfire. She tested my reactions endlessly and started some rudimentary exercises (finger drumming, mostly).
In this way, a habit was started almost in the moment after surgery. Four and a half years later and I still tap out tunes on the table top with my left hand. And it has advanced to learning simple piano chords with Izzy, the music co-ordinator at Headway East London. She wants me to master Wonderwall, but I never was much of an Oasis fan.
