Dear LPG,

Isn’t it true that things change so rapidly?  One day you can be out about your business and the next you can find yourself in hospital for all sorts of reasons, and this is even more likely to happen more readily as you get older.  When you are out it is very easy to forget how lonely it can be while you are in there. 

I was visiting a friend who has been there for a while recently and we got talking about what it is really like.  He can best be described as a young pensioner who tripped, fell and managed to break his hip.  I try to visit him regularly and during one such visit he started to tell me about how much he valued my visits.  He  told me that at the beginning he was too ill to really care, but he is now recovered enough to be aware of time again, just how much of it there is, and how long it takes to pass, when you are doing nothing but trying to recover.  He tells me that he is frustrated because he has so much time to think of all the things that he could, should and would be doing, were he not there.

The nursing staff are so busy that they have little time to do more than come to his bedside when he needs something,  and the other people sharing his small ward have their own problems which limits the conversations he can have.  He told me that the most valuable parts of the day for him are the times when he is visited. 

In his opinion it sometimes got so bad that he was happy to see anyone at all; friend or family.   The newspapers and TV (if you can afford it) are a distraction, but he told me that it is a blessing to see anyone who can tell him a little about what is really going on in the outside world.   While you are dependent on your body to do its healing work, your mind goes stir crazy. 

It has been a while since I had to be a hospital patient, and I have to admit it is not my favourite place to be as a visitor, but I wanted to remind readers of how important it is to make the time to visit your friends and family who are stuck in hospital.  Don’t be one of those who find out that a person you know has been admitted, and adopts that, “he’s got loads of real friends that will be there all the time, he won’t need me too.” attitude.

 In spite of the extra bus journey, (even if you have one - forget taking the car, it is likely to cost more in parking than petrol), and the time it puts in your already busy day, every now and then, don’t leave it to all their other friends.  Even if hospitals make you feel queasy or it is not an action that you enjoy doing, it is likely to mean so much to a hospital inmate that you know. 

DL, Beckenham.