It’s Sunday morning and it’s blowing a hoolie outside.
A yellow wind warning is in place for Dundee and surrounding areas, as a friend near Auchterarder texts to say a tree in her garden has succumbed to the gales.
Ah well, there’s nothing else for it, I tell myself.
A guilt-free day at home pottering. Possibly in pyjamas.
And then my youngest, Guthrie, eight, says this:
“Eh mum, I had an itchy ear.”
Experience has taught me something peculiar was to follow.
“So I put the pen in my ear to itch it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And when I took the pen out, the tip was missing.”
“What?”
Cue: Banshee calling to Jamie to come downstairs, there’s a pen top in his son’s ear; questioning him to see if he’s sure it’s in his ear, given we couldn’t see it; examining said pen and affirming the top was indeed missing (the small rubbery nib used for schooling on tablets), ascertaining it wasn’t sore.
And so a chill day became a trip to A&E at Ninewells.
As we sat in the waiting room, I thought of the times I’d been to that very A&E department. They say it’s standard with boys and while a sweeping generalisation, in my experience, true. Minor emergencies, thank goodness.
As the nurse took notes, then later, when a doctor saw us to shine a light into Guthrie’s ear and try two devices to hook the tip out, which she did with relative ease because of her clear expertise and calm demeanour, I was flooded with gratitude.
Gratitude that we have Ninewells in our city and have done for 50 years.
Over that half century, I’d wager almost every Dundonian – and a majority of people not born and bred here but who call this city home, have a story to tell about how Ninewells has had an impact on their lives.
It is only right that it’s reported when things go wrong at any hospital – and it certainly not the case that every experience, no matter the medical setting, is a happy one.
Most Dundonian parents thank Ninewells for their children
But it’s the vast major if daily occurrences that don’t make the news.
Most Dundonians thank Ninewells for the safe arrival of their child or children.
I will never forget being given a tiny mint green hat – knitted by volunteers to give new mums, for my firstborn Monty; or the amazing midwife who told him to stop ‘plastering’ – a magnificently Dundee term – and get on with breastfeeding. It was funny then and it makes me smile now.
An act of kindness that springs timing was not at Ninewells but York Hospital when, a few days after my dad died (quick recap: Jimmy from Charleston – missing since I was two. I found him through a private investigator ten years before he died) I received a call from a doctor to ask if I had any questions – anything at all, about how he had died.
This astonished me because it wasn’t a necessity to make that call – it was a kindness.
Can you imagine working in A&E, not knowing from one moment to the next of any given day, what might present itself?
An old school pal called Alison, or Ali, has two brothers Mike and Colin, who both work in Ninewells A&E.
Whenever I see them I feel strangely emotional and want to write to their mum Liz to say how proud she must be. Imagine knowing not one but two sons save lives. I think I’d combust with pride.
At some point during this latest trip to A&E, I realised that I have Ninewells to thank not only for delivering my boys (an emergency caesarean followed by two planned) but for the fact they were conceived at all.
For just after Ninewells opened all those years ago, my now father-in-law David, a wonderful man and microbiologist, moved from Glasgow with his young family to take a job at the new hospital. Doubtful I’d have met his then two-year-old son, Jamie, had Dundee not become their new home.
I speak so often with people not from Dundee, but who call it home because of Ninewells. Often they have moved here to study medicine, where they fall in love and lay down roots.
And often, those not brought up in Dundee but who come to it as an adult, appreciate what it offers all the more because they have a comparison.
Whether it is quality of life, beauty, fresh air, annual hours of sun, character, property prices or any number of factors, they can see it’s better than what they knew before.
When that not-so-lazy Sunday drew to a close and I lay in bed, I considered that not only is it the kindness and expert ways of staff that abides, but the unexpected humour of the situation too.
For I remembered approaching the entrance to A&E earlier that day.
Readying to tell staff what had happened, I squeezed Guthrie’s wee hand and asked: “What ear is it again?”
“2025.”
“No which… oh, never mind.”
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