I was in hospital in 1966 to have my appendix out.
I was 17.
The only thing I can really remember about the nursing care at that time was the profound embarrassment (and indeed some terror) of having my groin razor shaved by a young (and also embarrassed) student nurse.

I was again in hospital in 1991, having had a brain haemorrhage, but a convenient bout of amnesia has wiped all aspects of that from my mind.

My middle daughter, Eileen, was ill with Leukaemia when she was 4 (she is now a perfectly healthy 25) and my best memory of that unhappy time was the incredible kindness of the nurses in Our Ladies Hospital in Crumlin. Not only their kindness but also their skill and experience, which seemed far ahead of the doctors to which they had to bow.

It was with some terror then that I committed myself to the “Bons” in Cork last Monday for a hernia operation. It would be purely routine my consultant had assured me.
“In on Monday, “OP” on Tuesday and out by lunchtime Wednesday.”
By the time I got as far as the ward on Monday afternoon I was in a lather of solid funk. My mind was reeling with tales of hospital bugs, with newspaper stories of people who came out of the anaesthetic vegetables, of people in for tonsillectomies having legs removed by confused surgeons.
The nurse couldn’t have been kinder or more understanding, she even whispered (having read my blood pressure) that I could have a sedative if I wanted. Eventually it was shame that calmed me. I was in a small ward, just the four of us, and the other men there were really sick. There were “medical” patients not “surgical” like me.
They, unlike me, had every right to be in a blue funk (and weren’t).
I was also blessed to be in a ward where no one was a television watcher.
It was switched on for the news then switched firmly off.
Just like at home.
These men had arrived in at much the same time as me so we were all learning the ropes as we went.
Again it was the nurses who smoothed all our paths. They seemed to know in advance about any problems we might have. Small touches like sorting out better pillow mountains for reading, quietly insisting on giving pain killers to men determined to prove themselves stoics, and gently reassuring distraught wives when their husbands were out of earshot.
Are all these extras in the “Nurses Charter”?
By the following morning I knew more about these men than I knew about people who I had worked with for years. A hospital ward is a hell of a level playing field.
The following morning I was gotten ready for surgery. No groin shave this time but a stomach shave done on a totally unembarrassed 56 year old, with an totally un-threatening electric razor, by an totally unembarrassed student nurse. Times have changed.
I then had to don the backless hospital gown, no improvement there, and, a definite sartorial disimprovement, put on white, thigh high, support stockings (a blood clot preventative). I will leave the remarks of the medical patients to me in this get up to your imagination.
However instead of the indignity of being trollied aloft to the operating theatre like a transvestite pasha, they allowed me (another act of kindness) to walk up to unaided, wearing dressing gown and slippers to hide most of my shame. (I say most of because I had bought short pyjamas for the hospital so my white elasticated calves were on show.)

My memories of the operation are vague, I remember an Indian male surgical nurse putting his arm around my shoulder to relieve my terror (thereby proving that womankind don’t have the patent on kindness)
I remember a surly anaesthetist, my jovial surgeon coming in and saying
“Is he not out yet? Sure we’ll do it with a local”
I remember lying there wondering why is the anaesthetic was not taking and then realising that it had, and, from the bandages on my stomach that the whole operation was over.
I was cheered by my ward when I made my re-entry, this time unashamedly pashlike on the trolley. As I went in and out of dopey sleep for the next several hours I was aware of three sets of concerned eyes on me every time I opened mine.
There was the catering assistant saying “You’re only allowed tea and toast- but I’ll give you an extra slice” which she did hidden under a napkin.
Then there was the night nurse saying “ Did they only give you tea?
I’ll get you more toast as soon as the coast is clear.”
Which she did , accompanied by the jeers of the medical patients,
(“D’ye see the way they coddle the surgicals!”)

The following morning my consultant came in bright and early and told me I could go home. My new friends gave me a rousing send off.
I shook hands with all my ward, genuinely wishing them the very best,
I still can’t quite believe how close we had all got on a mere 36 hour acquaintance.
Was I just fortunate in my ward-fellows and my nurses?
I don’t think so.

I’m reliable informed that Leonard Cohen wasn’t writing about the nurses in the “Bons” when he wrote the following.
He could well have been.

The sisters of Mercy they are not departed or gone
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just cant go on
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me their song
Oh I hope you run into them you who’ve been travelling long.

By the way the operation was a success.
My navel is now back where it should be.