From the floor up - working in a hospital at last!

I was born in 1964, just a few roads away from St.Albans City Hospital, an average sized general hospital serving the people of the city and surrounding villages. My Dad was at work and my Mum was helped by my 'Auntie' Mary, our next-door neighbour and later to be my Godmother. It was still common then to be born at home and virtually unheard of for the father to be in attendance; no mobiles to call them back home either (he wouldn't have come anyway as he had a deep dread of hospitals and all akin to them).

Throughout my childhood I was very aware of the hospital which was set on a higher ground than we were in our little cul-de-sac. Because of its height, I could see much of it from my parent's bedroom window which was upstairs at the front of the house. There was an annual firework show in the grounds (good view of Roman candles and rockets) and a very tall single stack chimney with a thick black ring of brick around the top. I was fascinated by the chimney and the dark grey clouds of smoke it puffed out. For some reason (possibly something to do with the high level of WW2 interest in our house) I imagined it was fed with amputated limbs daily to keep the fire burning hotly and the smoke at the top gusting across the roof tops on a windy day.

I visited the hospital on several occasions. The most memorable time was when I fell on a rake which was lying across our concrete garden path. I whacked my nose hard as I fell and it started bleeding heavily, a real 'pumper'. However, the bleeding was of little concern, I was a serial bleeder and well used to having wet cloths on the back of my neck and a one of my Dad's big white hankies clutched to the bridge of my nose. Still this time, it didn't stop and Mum had to take me over the road to the little hospital casualty. The casualty Doctor packed my nose with yards of ribbon gauze; a hideous experience which should have put me off hospitals for life. Having jammed the gauze hard into the back of my skull, it was then left to dry rock hard. Several days later it was removed by the doctor, who caught hold of the loose end sticking out of my nostril and pulled...hard. Anyone who has had one of these or an iodine pack or a wet to dry dressing knows exactly what it is like. To say it was an eye watering, gut wrenching experience just doesn't do it justice but in spite of this (or because of it) I remained fascinated by all things hospital.

Perhaps it was inevitable that I would end up working in a hospital one, one day and so I did. It was a part-time job, Saturday morning, three hours every week. I was a domestic on the gynaecology ward, with a woman called Iris. A foot in the door at last.