Authors Electric

The NHS belongs to the people.   It is there to improve our health and wellbeing, supporting us to keep mentally and physically well, to get better when we are ill and, when we cannot fully recover, to stay as well as we can to the end of our lives. It works at the limits of science – bringing the highest levels of human knowledge and skill to save lives and improve health. It touches our lives at times of basic human need, when care and compassion are what matter most.”   Try reading this passage aloud. To my ears the  rhythm  and the  phrasing  achieve an almost prayerful quality:   to stay as well as we can to the ends of our lives . This is the introduction to the most recent revision of the NHS Constitution and, while I’m not advocating the NHS designed-to-be-read-as-literature I’d be glad if you left this blog and went there now. I think we need to remind ourselves of the beauty of the concept.  https://www.gov.uk/government...

"Pet Therapy" - as approved by Dr Moreira Pinned to my mother's sitting room wall is a small and slightly worn piece of paper. It's headed Dr Moreira's Good Advice. Dr Moreira's title is Speciality Doctor Later Life Care Community Psychiatry and I hope she realises how invaluable she has been in helping my mother (and me) through periods of particular distress. My mother has both Alzheimer's and vascular dementia and there have been moments when I have feared that medication might be necessary. Dr Moreira asked us questions, listened to the answers and offered preliminary advice. This was the list I jotted down later: Drink water frequently Eat as healthily as you can Take exercise but don't get over-tired Avoid disorientation Have some fun Don't get ill I remember thinking that the last one must be some sort of doctorly joke. Illness is something that just happens: you get it cured and carry on. People with dementia,...

Clicking impatiently through your e-r eader to plunge into Tuesday's Gone , the latest Nicci French novel, you are unlikely to pause any longer than a thumb-twitch over the page which says 'To Francis and Julia'. Why should you? You're in a hurry. You almost certainly read Blue Monday, the first in the Frieda Klein series, and gasped in horror at that novel's final twist. You, the reader, know something vital which neither the heroine no r the police have any suspicion. Even the widow does not know who's dead. But you do. And that means you also know who's been left alive. You need to know what happens next. I, on the other hand, have bought the book in both formats. The electronic version will travel with me in my handbag; the chunky hardback stays at home for both of us to sa vour those four words on that creamy bookwove page: 'To Francis and Julia'. It's a dedication. Such a surprising, gratifying, humbling, mystifying, heart-warming pu...