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By the time I got to the end of this period, now nineteen to eighteen months in the NHS, it occurred to me that I had not yet had a single day's paid holiday. Somehow I seemed to have missed out on holidays in each of my jobs, and in the last few weeks of this one, when I had been hoping to have three weeks off, my opposite number went down with osteomyelitis of her one remaining leg, her other leg being artificial. Therefore this was a crisis situation and she had to go to bed for six weeks. I was therefore asked if I would stay on and do her work for her, as well as my own. At the end of the time I was allowed to go, but with no additional holiday, or indeed any holiday money at all.
I therefore returned home full of doubts as to whether I wished to continue with medicine, and I once more landed on my father’s doorstep, where I took I think on this occasion about six weeks off, or even longer. I was completely exhausted, and thoroughly disillusioned with medicine in general, and by then would have accepted any alternative career offered to me, I think. I had quite given up the idea of getting a job in Bristol, since I had been firmly rejected for all Bristol jobs ever since I had qualified in London, this despite the fact that I had originally tried to get into Bristol University. I assumed therefore I was persona non grata, and not that it was just the shortage generally of jobs.
However, I suddenly struck lucky, for my friend Janet Young, an ex-Royal Free girl, was going on holiday from her paediatric post at Southmeads Hospital Bristol, and was supposed to arrange her own locum. She therefore told me a sorry tale of how she would never get away unless I came and did two weeks for her. I explained that I knew absolutely nothing about paediatrics and would be worse than useless, but she explained that there were other nice doctors who would cover up for me, and so in the end I took the job.
This was to prove a turning point in my career, for not only did I discover then that I liked paediatrics very much and that it was a most satisfying job with lots of practical common sense involved, but of course it also had the advantage of bringing me nearer to my father, though admittedly I saw very little of him even while we were living in the same town. Thirdly it put me in touch with the Bristol paediatricians, who were to prove invaluable for my later career with their support and advice, and fourthly it introduced me to Timos Valaes, the Greek registrar in paediatrics, who with his wife was to prove to be a lifelong friend.
Timos and Lilika Valaes with their first child
Shortly after I went to work there he lost his flat in town, because his wife was pregnant and so I thought of a scheme whereby he and his wife and new baby could move into the top floor of Durdham Park, having it as a flat, while my father would remain in the lower two floors, and that they would eat en famille, while Timos Valaes and I ran the paediatric department between us, which we virtually did. This proved to be an inspired move from everybody's point of view, as it solved my father’s loneliness problems until he married Jenifer, it solved the Valaes’ housing problems, and it provided Lilika Valaes with a very handy father figure, who took her out with the baby in the car for drives, and supervised the shopping. I look upon it as one of the most successful and heaven-sent opportunities of my life, and it certainly was instrumental in my following the path of a paediatric career.
This is where I am going to bring this tape to an end and start another one I think, as it seems a suitable place and I am getting very dry. Perhaps this is a suitable place to mention that I have had yet another visitor into St Austell hospital, namely Mr Browell, the surgeon who operated on me in January. It dawned on me that what he really wanted to know was whether I felt the operation in January had been worth while, and whether I had achieved any quality of life from it. I was astonished that he would need to ask this, as I felt it was self-evident. [This is where the tape ends. Sheila died a few days later.]
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