Part 4 - Big Events & Many Changes - 1985 - 1986

Part 4

A BIG POST

Some Serious Life Events 
& 
Many Many Changes

1985-1986

This is the longest of my Life Diary posts / chapters.
This was a complex time...
This was a Time Beyond...
2 Years
that
 Changed my World
Forever

The next 2 years were to be some of the busiest of my life. 

This Post will not be easy reading - it was a difficult and hectic time....

 A Career in Nursing - Where Next?

Inevitably I was ambitious and although I loved my time on David Ferrier Ward I needed to move on to new horizons and experiences in my Nursing Career. 

I had a decision to make - as I had two pathways I wanted to follow. I had loved my time as a student nurse in Kings Casualty Department and had a real interest in following that as a potential career. However I also had a real interest and fascination in Intensive Care Nursing as a career. As a student nurse I had stared with wonder through the swing doors of Kings Intensive Care at the beds surrounded by machinery and a tangle of tubes, all centered on the person in the bed fighting for their life.  

I went too see Miss Gibbs, a mild mannered and lovely Nursing Officer who covered David Ferrier Ward. She listened patiently and considered carefully. "David, Kings A&E is unique - you will be hard pressed to find other A&Es that will give you the same experience. But Intensive Care is an emergent nursing science. As an Intensive Care nurse you will go wherever you want." 

And with these words of wisdom the die was cast - and I successfully applied for a Staff Nurse post in Kings College Hospital Intensive Care Unit.

KCH ITU - 8 beds open to Cardio-Thoracic Surgery and all general Trauma. It was to be an imposing challenge. I would move from being an experience Neuro Medical Staff Nurse to a Novice ITU Nurse. 

I remember my first handover in the ITU office - it was gibberish - I hardly understood a word of it - there was a whole new complex technical vocabulary, a new language and skills set to be learnt. And thus I learnt a life lesson - no matter how experienced you think you may be - being a novice again is always only just around the next corner... It was a humbling and necessary experience. I discovered that you are never too experienced, senior, clever or learned - to learn something new.....

The World - 1985 - 1986 

On the wider world stage our personal lives were being shaped by a time of great change and innovation. It was 1985 and the first British mobile phone call was made. 

A debate in the House of Lords was televised for the first time. 

And the infamous Miners’ strike ended bitterly after one year of conflict and chaos - Thatcher gloating in her false victory.  

And in July 1985 there was a world changing event - the Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia raise over £50m for famine relief in Ethiopia. No one had ever seen anything like this - a global event personified and electrified by Queens iconic set... 

LIVE AID - QUEEN

Ironically I was on the day of Live Aid on night duty in ITU - but we captured the event on our treasured and 1st ever Video Tape recorder (used primarily to entertain Thomas with our 1st ever Video Tape - Thomas the Tank Engine!!). 

The strange new world of ITU

ITU was another new beginning, a new language, new challenges and a new type of patients and their families....... There were to be new experiences that would shape me. 

Inevitably I did Nights in ITU, long dark, nights full of strange experiences. A young woman who set herself on fire by covering herself with petrol. Inevitably she died. Then there was a baby assaulted by its father, swung by its legs and its head crashed into a wall. It too died - and so did a little bit of me.... I learnt - and the lessons were hard and sometimes painful.  

A Policeman, George Hammond 1985, stabbed in a local shop. George suffered cardiac arrest a dozen times in the 1st 24 hours in ITU - and they replaced his circulating blood volume over and over. There were Police queued  up outside ITU donating blood. George would survive, despite multiple organ failure and unspeakable personal suffering. It was a privilege to care for him. It was 12 years later that he would eventually die from the result of his horrendous injuries.  

------------

MOMENTOUS FAMILY EVENTS

My Parents deteriorating health was a significant issue,. My Sister Sue arranged for them to move to sheltered accommodation in a bungalow in Ferryside in Carmarthen. Moving my parents to Wales was a huge endeavor, but one we achieved in eventuality with herculean effort. 

The Death of Sue Barton

Sue - my sister - 4 years older than me. She lived in sleepy village of Ferryside in Carmarthen with her husband Charles. Their little house on the edge of the startling beautiful estuary. 

Sue - my soul mate, my friend, my protector. She had been my everything. She read to me the Narnia books, over and over, and held me close and told my parents off when their arguments upset me. 

Sue - my defender and guardian, my role model and closest friend, my mentor.

Poor Sue - had been ill, suffering from a blood disorder at the age of 32 years - pre-leukemic.

I was in my my maisonette in Love Walk, it was 1985. Tom was toddling around the house. The phone went - Sue had been in an accident, she had accidentally fallen from a train in Carmarthen, she was critically ill. 

A night of sleeplessness - and in the morning I was on a train from Paddington to Swansea. Sue was critically ill in Morriston Hospital ITU in Swansea. 

I arrived in ITU. She was Intubated and ventilated, on Life Support. a serious Head Injury. I have an overwhelming sense of "Nothing" - I am "Blank".

The days passed, I was staying with my parents in Ferryside. I wept silently and alone  as I walked through the village.

And then a day. I sat by her hospital bed. I was taken aside by the medical and nursing team. Sue was dead.

Again I sat by her bed - the ventilator, pumps and monitor were all turned off - a nurse sat with me - there was eventual stillness , her heart stopped - her eyes opened, a death reflex - but she was not there. Sue passes.....    

I returned to Ferryside and tell my parents of their daughters death. My father, himself already frail beyond measure, said "she beat me to it...."

The Death of my Father

Within months of his daughters death my fathers health further deteriorated. A once intelligent and proud man, his final years had been blighted by Parkinson's Disease and Dementia. He slowly slipped into frailty and confusion, losing his dignity to incontinence and confusion.  

It was my abiding joy that he had the chance to meet his Grandson Tom. Even in his confusion he cooed with pleasure over little TommyB (as he would be later called in life). I might of known that Tommy would become a Nurse late in life, when saw him toddle over to his Granddad with a tissue to wipe the saliva dripping uncontrollably from his mouth. 

My poor Father became increasingly frail - he was confused beyond measure and was physically emaciated. He was admitted to the Priory Elderly Care Hospital in Carmarthen. The day came. My Mother was with me, as was Janet. He passed away with his family at his side. 

We went to leave, and my Mother clasped at my arm. "I want to see him, one last time, I have been seeing him all my life." So we saw him one last last time - she wept, and kissed his cold face, holding his cold hand.

The Christmas of 1985 was the last I was to spend with my Mother. We brought her from her little bungalow in Ferryside to our South London maisonette. It was a difficult time, she was ill, and she would not see another Christmas.

We Move to Wales

There we were with our little boy, living in a London ghetto. We talked, and talked, and planned.. A move to Wales was planned. To assure a job in Wales I needed to be ITU trained - the then famed English National Board ITU course (ENB 100). A 6 month intense training programme based in KCH ITU - I applied and started in 1985 - despite my previous assertion to never be a student again. Six moths later I passed!

My my what planning we did. And eventually there came a day that we packed up our home, and set off in a battered old Rover to Wales. Down the M4 we took a one way trip to a new life with our little boy Tom, leaving London only to ever return latter as visitors and tourists. We moved into a rather shabby flat in Carmarthen. And two days later I started as a Staff Nurse in Glangwilli District General Hospital as a Staff Nurse. 

A BRAVE NEW WORLD
For Thomas David Barton (and Family)

We were now in Wales, working as Nurses. We bought our 1st house, 19 Bryn Gorwel. Thomas was growing and going to nursery. Despite my ongoing aversion to education I started a Diploma in Nursing at Swansea College of Further Education. Life was moving on and changing.

The Death of my Mother would mark a transition from the past to the future. Her passing cut the final ties with a time gone by, from a childhood and young life, to an adult life as a professional and parent.  

She had suffered from Bowel Cancer for several years and had surgery in London with the subsequent formation of a colostomy. There had also been treatment with radiotherapy. 

But by 1986 my poor Mother had carcinomatosis, multiple metastasis, she was riddled. On the day of her death, just 2 weeks before Xmas 1986, I sat at her bedside as she slipped away. Janet was not with me, she was at Toms 1st Xmas concert, a decision we both felt that my mother would have approved of. 

It was a few days later, on a dark wintery evening, that I held Tom in my arms in our dark dark garden. Tom - "Where's Granny". Me "She has gone to heaven, in the sky", Tom - Looking at the night Sky - "Will Granny Come Out?"

THE END OF A NEW BEGINNING .....

TIME TO MOVE ON.......