15. Getting even closer to Christmas at JGH

In days now long gone ... as we approached the 4 day marker point leading up to Christmas Eve, the planned admissions of surgical patients (non-urgent cases) used to be carefully tailored to ensure that only patients requiring minor surgery were admitted.

This was so that the maximum number of patients could be discharged on Christmas Eve and so that certain wards could (hopefully) be closed down .... either that or a certain percentage of the surgical beds could be temporarily closed down and held in reserve for emergency admission purposes during the holiday period.

The situation in the medical wards was obviously different and these were very often bulging at the seams way before Christmas arrived, with only those managing to achieve near-miraculous recoveries having any hope of "going home for Christmas".

But to return to the state of play within the surgical wards, I can remember certain quiet conversations that could be heard during ( ... or often after ... ) "Ward Rounds" when the medical staff and the senior nurses would try and work out who was going to be fit enough to go home before Christmas, who could be moved elsewhere and (sadly) who was not likely to survive until or beyond the Christmas period.

As I have mentioned above, the goal in this pre-Christmas period was to try to calculate how many surgical beds were expected to remain 'open' over Christmas (or might be needed) and how many others could be closed. Based upon these calculations if was then usually possible to plan strategies for moving patients onto the wards that were were going to be staying open.

Then usually on 23rd or 24th December the portering staff would make themselves available to transfer patients (either on foot, in wheelchairs or in their beds) out on to the connecting surgical corridors and along to one or more of the male wards and female wards that were going to remain open.

I remember nurses and porters, trimmed with garlands and tinsel, and patients too entering into the spirit of the Christmas exodus from their "own" wards and can recall - even now - the laughter and some of the frivolity as these two groups (the patients and the staff) as they moved out of familiar territory on their journeys to find room in another "inn".

Yes ... there were lots of jokes and lots of legs-being-pulled as these short journeys were made but if one listened carefully (particularly to what was NOT being said too) one could often sense the feelings of sadness amongst people who were not going to be going home for Christmas and who would instead have to spend the festive period on a strange ward - perhaps next to someone who they didn't know OR more tragically the awareness by some patients - who were not being moved - that perhaps their remaining days could be counted fairly quickly on one hand.

Soon the wards that WERE to remain open would need decorating with Christmas streamers and decorations ... but perhaps I can talk about this particular activity in my next entry ?

In the meantime perhaps some readers can identify with how happy those people were who WERE expecting to go home and how pleased too certain staff would be feeling too at the thought that they were going to be off-duty on or other of the Christmas 'special days' because of the fact that the surgical work-load was expected to be reduced.

Yet a certain sense of camaderie and determination to "make the most " Christmas could still be sensed amongst those patients whose health meant that they had to stay put during Christmas and also amongst the staff that expected to be working over Xmas Eve, Xmas Day and Boxing Day, who I suspect felt (deep down inside themselves) a measure of pride that they were going to be able to "serve" their fellow men and women during this special time.