41. Life actually

Key words/phrases: "Love Actually", Hugh Grant, Nurse Tutors, Miss Bingham, Mrs Parry, Mr Walker, Channel 4 TV, "The Human Footprint", Producer : Nick Watts,

No. 41

Like the Hugh Grant romantic comedy film “Love Actually” with all its sub-plots, real life or “life actually” is just as rich if you think about it, isn’t it ?

For instance, think again for a minute about of the composition of the human body. Perhaps you’ll have been amused in the past by some of the many amazing figures relating to human anatomy and physiology? If you trained as a nurse within the Dartford School may be you can even remember your jaw dropping floorwards occasionally at some of the facts and figures that tumbled out of the mouths of nurse tutors such as Miss Bingham, Mrs Parry and Mr Walker during A & P sessions ?

Do you recall for instance that there are 200 bones in the adult body (discounting the three bones in each inner ear), that the adult intestines are on average 25ft in length, that a grown-up’s skin covers a surface area of 20 square feet (so is blanket size, in fact) and finally, that the human eye muscles are kept the busiest in the body averaging 100,000 movements per a day ?

But leaving A & P to one side, did you see that recent Channel 4 television programme (April 26 2007) entitled “The Human Footprint” ? No ... you didn’t ?! Well neither did I although I certainly enjoyed reading a review of it later.

According to Nick Watts who gathered the statistics together and produced the programme we clock-up some amazing personal records as human beings during our lives.

Did you know that on average the number of apples eaten by each UK resident during his/her lifetime is likely to have been 5,272 and the number of carrots: 10, 800 ? Or that on average each British citizen will have owned 4.8 televisions and 8 cars ? Mr and Mrs Average will also, or so it seems, have taken 59 foreign holidays and spent £286, 311 on taxes.

In the TV programme Nick Watts tried to help viewers to visual some of the enormous quantities of consumables that we chomp our way through by showing a “Hansel and Gretel” house built of the 10,000 bars of chocolate that each of us eat in a lifetime and he even lined up 15,000 pints of milk on someone's doorstep !

The point he was making and the point that I want to flag up again today is how unavoidably repetitious our behaviour can be and what creatures of habit we apparently are.

Each of us will - again on average - have walked, he said, 15, 464 miles, taken 7,163 baths or showers and drunk 74, 802 cups of tea during our 78.5 years of life.

This set me thinking about repetitious acts that each of us may have performed during the working parts of our lives and in particular of course about the number of times we might have repeated certain actions during any time that we may have spent at Joyce Green Hospital.

How many naso-gastric tubes do you think that you passed on patients in surgical and medical wards there ? How many intramuscular injections did you give during your working life there ? How many cups of tea did you drink in its ward kitchens and how many miles do you think that you might have walked to your meal-breaks or whilst collecting or ‘dropping something off’ in one department or another ?

If you worked in one of the hospital kitchens or the hospital dining rooms - how many meals will you have produced or served, or if you were a radiographer there how many times did you say: “I want you to hold your breath now while I count three” ?

In his TV programme Watts suggested that in each of our lifetimes we will have cried (or bathed our eyes naturally) with 121 pints of tear drops, made 117 friends …. Oh and talked a lot too, because according to him a woman utters between 6,400 - 8, 000 words per day and a man on average produces between 2,000 - 4, 000.

So .... sometime today think about the number of times that you have did the same thing at Joyce Green, said the same thing, walked the same path or made the same movement. Can you remember someone who: “Always said … ” or “always seemed to ….” ? Was there someone whose punctuality or clockwork regularity at Joyce Green you appreciated or found reassuring ?


If we really are such creatures of habit I suppose that many of us reading this will have lots of memories about having done “this or that” for the umpteenth time, or even for the last time perhaps ?