The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
Deuteronomy 33:27
Our patients are terribly ill, misunderstood, and suffer at the hands of a poorly informed medical
establishment and society.
(Professor Nancy Klimas, University of Miami, American Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome In-coming Presidential Address, Co-Cure, 21 March 2005; from Archives of Co-Cure, https://listserv.nodak.edu/archives/co-cure.html)
At the end of September 1990 I returned to the nurses’ home at Llandough. I was to have a different room, but it was still on the fourth floor – which did at least give me a good view looking towards the Bristol Channel. The few friends I knew from my previous group who lived there were very welcoming and wanted to know all about what had happened to me, and I then found that there were four people from my new group in addition to myself living at Llandough – one of whom, in the room opposite mine, was a Christian and came from the same area in North Somerset as me!
It was strange starting again, listening to all the introductory week talks for the second time. However, all went well and on the Friday afternoon I made a point of avoiding the Occupational Health department! Unbelievably – all the more so looking back now – I was informed that I had to finish the course of three Hepatitis B vaccinations, as the ‘powers that be’ did not believe that the first one could have made me ill. I decided to put off doing so for as long as possible.
We had eight weeks in the classroom, travelling each day to the School of Nursing at the UHW. We were given something of a crash course in anatomy and physiology – not too difficult for those of us who had just left school having studied science subjects, but a bit tough for the members of our group who were starting their training after a break from studying. We were also taught some basic practical skills – making beds, giving injections, taking blood pressures, doing dressings – mainly practising on each other and plastic models, with a few visits to wards.
After the eight weeks we had a two-month placement on a ward. My ward was at Llandough, so no getting up early to catch the minibus each day for a while! It was a medical ward specializing in chest problems – asthma, bronchitis, chronic lung and breathing problems, and so on. The sister on the ward was soon to retire. She was very much of the ‘old school’ and ruled the roost. Everyone – doctors, nurses, other staff, medical students and we nursing students, who were the lowest of the low – had to obey her every word. Yes, she was strict, but at the same time we learnt a lot from her. Maybe it would be helpful to trainee nurses today to have such nursing sisters!
During this time I was able to attend church. Living at Llandough, I was quite a way from the church I wanted to attend – Heath Evangelical Church – but a lady who belonged to the church and lived in Penarth kindly offered to pick me up; she assured me that driving past the hospital was only a short detour for her.
When we started working on the wards it wasn’t easy to attend services or mid-week meetings regularly, due to working shifts and some Sundays, but it worked out pretty well. The couple in the church who had looked after me when I was ill after the first vaccination worked with overseas students, so I attended their Sunday afternoon meetings when I could. It was good to meet with folk from numerous different countries and backgrounds – not something that often happened at my church back home.
However, there was still one unresolved problem – completing the course of three Hepatitis B vaccines, something which I was reminded about at regular intervals. I sought advice from a local GP, but as this particular vaccine was relatively new, there didn’t seem to be much information available on side-effects. This GP’s view was that, if I did have any problems, they wouldn’t be any worse than those I had had the first time and would probably not be as bad, so I should therefore go ahead and have the second injection. I wasn’t particularly happy about this, but as an eighteen-year-old student nurse, how could I argue with such medical advice? So, on 8 February 1991, I had the second vaccination. A friend came with me to make sure that I was all right, but thankfully I didn’t collapse. However, within under an hour – probably only around thirty minutes – I started to feel unwell. My sense of balance went haywire and I couldn’t stand up without holding onto something. Strange as it may seem, though, I wasn’t very worried. I hadn’t collapsed, and I had heard of other people feeling a bit ‘off’ for a day or two following a vaccination, so I went home to get over it, thinking that I would be OK again after a few days. How wrong I was!
