This time last year was a difficult time. Our youngest daughter Chloe, a gorgeous bubbly blonde 8 year old, had spent the previous 12 months randomly waking up through the night with severe stomach pains and vomiting, to the point that lime green bile was often all that was left to come up. She was finally diagnosed with a blocked ureter - the tiny tube that takes the wee from your kidney to your bladder and scheduled for surgery in January last year.
There's nothing quite like taking your baby to the big, fancy, shiny new hospital on a cold January morning in the hope that they're going to fix her and make her feel better. Handing her sleeping frame over to the anaesthetist to be whisked through the door into a theatre full of gowned, masked staff; cold, sterile instruments; and painfully bright lights. It's a lonely walk back out in the opposite direction.
Walking in a haze around the wee Marks and Spencer food shop, pretending to be hungry for a sandwich, as people bustle around you, coming and going with their own distractions. And then sitting in the soulless parent's room pretending to read a magazine, all the while worry constantly gnawing at you, having to trust that the people taking care of your little girl know what they're doing and have her best intentions at heart. Because at the end of the day they are just people like you and I.
But there's really nothing quite like that endless time being over and the first time you see her again, drowsy and disorientated, but ok and in one piece. And there's nothing quite like the gratitude that you feel for those people, people just like you and I, who make it their life's work to take care of others and to do their best to fix them and remove their suffering. No there's not a feeling like that in the world.
I've often thought about this over the last year and I often think about it from the other side and how it applies to us here at Coatbridge Family Dental Care. It makes me feel proud that people are willing to put their trust in our team as healthcare professionals to fix them and make them feel better. And it makes me feel proud of our team that they make it their aim in life to take care of our patients and have their best intentions at heart. Because they're just people like you and I.
P.S. we're very lucky Chloe is fine now - she hasn't been sick for a whole year!
What a difference a year makes!
