Cat Rhun

On this day eight years ago, my dearest Dad died at home of bowel cancer. His death was a good as it can possibly be - cocooned within the love of his wife, children and grandchildren, with his symptoms palliated beautifully. This was in no small part thanks to a small army of NHS community and palliative care nurses who visited daily, unstintingly, infusing Dad’s final days with acts of quiet yet priceless tenderness. How I wish everyone were able to receive such a service (I am painfully aware of the patients I sometimes treat who are dying on trolleys in hospital corridors - a travesty of what a good death should be). Curled up in grief the day after Dad died, I posted a tweet of thanks to that small army, the NHS staff who had held Dad throughout those fifteen long months of the cruelties of cancer. Improbably, the tweet set off around the world, being seen some 9 million times. It struck a particular chord with people in America, whose replies, in their thousands, were often heartbreaking. Why? I think because my tweet’s message was so simple. It spoke of gratitude to the NHS and for the fact that the one thing we never had to worry about during Dad’s illness was how we would pay for it - that his treatment might bankrupt us. The NHS is flawed and failing, the product of decades of underfunding, understaffing, outsourcing and the leaching of funds into private ‘providers’ hands. But it is still a jewel in the UK’s crown - the embodiment of something vital and profound. We in Britain inhabit a society that believes, collectively, in treating patients in need, irrespective of their ability to pay. How simple and decent and profoundly kind is that? My Dad gave his heart and soul to his NHS patients because he cared. It’s why I’m a doctor today. Here’s to the NHS, its founding principles, and the fight to remain a society whose members continue fundamentally to care about each other. And here’s to you, Dad.