As the coronavirus rages about us,  for many of us it is a time of contemplation.  For one thing, we all have time to think, and the fact that some of us may shortly be facing the fight of our life, concentrates the mind wonderfully.

So rather than continue this blog on things in medicine to be sceptical about, when this is definitely not a time to be sceptical about anything that might help the science of medicine, I have decided to write about myself, and why I decided to become a doctor.

I think many others of my age will also be doing this.  It is a time for reflection; about how we got here, and how future generations might do things differently, to the greater benefit of the planet and ourselves. So exploring the past seems a good place to start.

As I mentioned in my latest blog, on coronavirus, I am 75, which means that I was born in 1945, on a very cold day in January to be exact.  During that month the war in Europe was coming to an end with the Soviets advancing quickly from the East. The Auschwitz concentration camp, with its last 7,500 inmates still present, was liberated by Soviet forces that month, to the horror of the liberating forces.  It was clear that things were finally going our way, although the war in the far East went on until August when the Japanese surrendered after the Nagasaki bomb. 

Another baby born that month was the famous cellist, Jaqueline du Pre. 

I was brought up in Ebbw Vale, a town in the higher reaches of the Welsh valleys, which is famous for having as its MP for many years one Aneurin Bevan, who was the impetus behind the British NHS.  But I wasn’t born there, although that was where we lived, because my mother, aged 39, was expecting twins in her first pregnancy. The doctors thought that it was too dangerous for her to give birth in the Rookery, the local maternity hospital which had no doctors, but should travel 20 miles to the Lydia Beynon Nursing Home in Caerleon, where there were supposed to be doctors available. (This site has now been redeveloped into the Celtic Manor Resort).  In the event there may have been, but my mother did not see any as the birth was entirely straightforward. I was the second twin, my brother coming into the world 10 minutes before me. We were both small but a reasonable size for twins and we had no problems.  My mother took us home  (I have no idea how) after three days. 

Ebbw Vale at that time, like every other town in Britain, was in a state of heartfelt relief that the war, which had been going on for 5 years, was finally coming to an end. It was a time of hope and the town was beginning to think of what  would happen once peace was finally declared. Although most people think of the South Wales valleys as steep sided valleys with rows of houses along the bottom, Ebbw Vale was right at the top of the massive chain of valleys, and was therefore quite exposed. The bottom of the valley floor was 1000 feet up, and the mountains on either side reached over 1,800 feet, merging into open moorland, known as the Llangynidr moors.  Many houses had been built at the very top of the valley – in Spain it would have been known as a cirque, but we called it the cwm –  where the winds were pretty fierce.  It was always at least 2 degrees colder  there than down in the luscious Usk valley below. 

But it  was a very good place to grow up in. It had suffered dreadfully in the years after the great depression and my mother used to tell me of how people often used to go hungry, and  how poor some people were. She was the youngest of six, all of whom lived locally while we were growing up, and they weren’t nearly as poor as some – her father was a railwayman. Although the predominant employment at the time was coal mining, in the mid-thirties a steelworks, later known as Richard Thomas and Baldwins, had been built, and the town had begun to thrive. It was a close community with a strong culture, based on Eisteddfodau, literature, music, and regard for education. The steelworks were  the biggest in Europe and so quite important during the war, and so the town had set up a “Report Centre”, where people were organised to go out looking for any evidence that Hitler might have dropped a bomb locally on the mountains, or if there were any suspicious happenings.  As it happened, my father and mother both were volunteers there. My father was a teacher in the local grammar school, and at 40 was considered a confirmed bachelor, as he had never shown any inclination to get a girlfriend. My mother was also a teacher, also unmarried. She was a supply teacher, unqualified, but did the same work as a qualified teacher, for roughly half the pay. They lived on adjacent streets; my mother  with her brother’s family in Eureka Place and my father in “digs” in Brynheulog street, and they already knew each other socially, of course. And at the report centre they found that they had one important mutual interest – classical music.  My father had a primitive gramophone which played 78rpm  records. You needed 6 or so records to play a whole symphony so there was a complicated device where you could pile the records on one another so that they would automatically drop down at the end of each one, so that the next record could start playing. It must have been very exciting to hear a whole symphony in this report centre. Needless to say there wasn’t a lot to do there – Hitler never seemed to think that RTB’s steelworks, which we all thought was the ultimate in importance, worth bombing. In any case he would indeed have been very lucky to hit it – the mountains on either side were vast and planes weren’t that good at hitting long thin targets.  So our parents’ romance blossomed, and in February 1944, they decided they would get married, despite all the difficulties of the war, which was still in full swing at the time.  And eleven months later, we twins were born. I always say that it took Hitler and a world war to bring together these teachers living almost next door to each other in a small town. But obviously I am very glad it happened!

We were healthy twins on the whole, and put on weight rapidly. But health was a much more risky thing then, and my brother developed diphtheria at the age of 14 months.  It was a very serious disease, affecting the throat and sometimes causing fatal breathing obstruction. He was very ill in hospital for a month. It must have been a dreadfully worrying time for my parents, but he pulled through. Apparently I was badly affected by it, and missed him dreadfully.   But that was not the only time my brother was in hospital  I remember clearly what happened just after our third birthday. We decided to carry some books we had been playing with, upstairs. The stairs were steep and we decided to put the books on to a tablecloth, and we were carrying them upstairs with some difficulty. But just as we got to the top of the stairs Roger, who was below me, lost his footing and fell to the bottom, and broke his femur. I remember how upset I was, and I think now that perhaps I thought I had caused the accident – could I have pushed him? No-one would know of course, as no-one  witnessed it, and I don’t remember. But I was very distressed. I remembered visiting him in hospital with his leg pulled up on a pulley for weeks, and I was inconsolable.  And when he came home I fussed over him and was determined to look after him, to the point when I really got in the way. That was when I told everybody that I wanted to be a nurse when I grew up.  Then when I was a little bit older I was told that there were such things as lady doctors and I decided that I would be one of those. 

That conviction never left me, and when I passed the eleven plus and went to the grammar school, I took all the options for medicine, and eventually qualified and became a family doctor. 

So even without having Aneurin Bevan as my MP, medicine was in my blood, so to speak.  But he was a big influence on me and I went to hear him several times.  Roger was very interested in politics, and he took me to labour party meetings when we were in our teens. Aneurin Bevan used to speak at the “Stute” – the Miner’s and Working Man’s Institute, and he was a very fine speaker.  His stammer, which was still there even though he had worked hard at overcoming it, was actually  something which endeared you to him, and he could really get us very emotional about what needed to happen. It is not surprising that I have never got rid my strong social conscience.  I worked for the NHS the whole  of my life and I totally believe in a strong health service available to everyone.  Diphtheria is now no more because of the development of vaccines, and I can never understand the anti-vaxxers point of view.  I just wonder how many of them will refuse the anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccine when it comes?  The one thing that consoles most of us in Britain who are in lockdown just now is that we know our NHS will do its very best for us, at no cost, and the staff will give their all. It is tragic when  politicians  deny them  the protection they need. 

I would like to think that this new pandemic will change the way public health is approached, and I would like to write more on this later as things develop.  So look out for my next blog!