Recently I was unfortunate enough to have to pay a visit to a Dublin Hospital emergency ward. I have read and heard all the stories about how horrific an experience staying in A&E can be but somewhere you always seem to wonder if it could really be that bad. It is.

 Without any doubt I can honestly say that the conditions our Nurses and Doctors work in and the experience that sick members of the public are expected to go through is truly unbelievable. I was fortunate enough in that whilst in A&E I was in one of the Clinical Decision Units (CDU), a small little alcove of up to four beds to one corner of the A&E. But to walk through the rest of the area and to hear the sounds of a night in that environment quite honestly makes you afraid to get sick. I have no idea how the doctors and particularly the nurses cope with working in these conditions. When you see the bureaucracy involved and outright bizarre management decisions making their jobs even more difficult you would wonder why they don’t just pack up their stethoscopes and walk out the door.

I left the hospital with new found respect and admiration for the frontline staff, nurses and doctors. I couldn’t do a job in those conditions and I don’t know how they do. But I am grateful they can.

Before I go any further let me lay some things out in the open.

I am in my thirties and fortunate enough to have medical insurance to some degree. It’s not the highest policy but it is medical insurance. I was assigned to the CDU on my first night while they awaited a bed on a ward in the main hospital. Essentially I was admitted and under the care of the consultants as opposed to being caught in the in-between status of an A&E patient. Finally, whilst in a lot of pain I wasn’t in a situation where blood or other bodily fluids were flowing from my body, altogether far more distressing and embarrassing situations to be in when you are sharing your living space with complete strangers.

During the recent election, and indeed during the local elections before it and the general election before them and pretty much every other opportunity our elected officials have had to speak to the voters, health has always been a major issue. For the vast majority of the public there is a very simple, straightforward equation that governs a lot of what they do, UNHEALTHY OR ILL   = I AM UNLIKELY TO BE HAPPY.  Sounds simple doesn’t it?

 So if people accept this then the logical conclusion is that they need to be healthy to have a chance of being happy.  And if they are unfortunate enough to become ill then they like to have some degree of confidence that someone will look after them and try to get them back to health, and happiness.

But people do not have that confidence in the current health system. It is viewed an s a management heavy dinosaur that is preoccupied with costs and money and as a result views the patient’s condition as secondary. It is run as a business where the provision of care is a service. I am not saying that service provision cannot be run as a business but there are different priorities.

If I am selling computers I am focussed on getting as many units through the doors for the highest price possible.  You cannot run a health service like that. 

The health service needs to be concerned with the patient’s needs and try to make them as comfortable as possible and then as healthy as possible in as short a time as is prudent.

From my stay in hospital I can say this isn’t the case in the current system. It isn’t the nurses and doctors that are creating this. Nor is it the individual managerial and support worker. It’s the culture that has been allowed to develop over time and it urgently needs attention.

During my stay I witnessed the horrors of overcrowded emergency ward, where people are sitting on seats for days and sleeping on trolleys, three deep in a corridor for days on end. If it isn’t a breeding ground for spreading illness then I don’t know what is. People of all ages and sexes sharing the same close living environment and the only connection they had was the misfortune to be ill at the same time. The facilities aren’t there for the wards to cope with the levels of people involved. In that scenario it’s no wonder that people lose patience and in some cases tempers. That’s not excusing their behaviour or actions but it does go some way to understanding it. Everyone has a breaking point and it’s clear to see how some of these people had reached theirs. Despite all this the nurses and doctors did their upmost to fulfil their roles, but throughout it all there was a looming sense of frustration and annoyance, even anger that they are being forced to work in these conditions.

 I understand that as a country we are broke. We are hurtling towards an abyss financially and as a result everything has to be cut back. But we need to focus on what is important (health & education for example) and not on what appears to be popular to our continental brethren in the markets. We have reached the stage whereby our politicians are taking the care their ill voters need and pawning it to pay off bankers and investors who took a risk and who are no longer prepared to accept that risks can sometimes go bad. It can’t come as a surprise to anyone as for the past couple of decades the most heard expression in Ireland is “investments can go down as well as up”.

Yet we have sectors of our community who are prepared to place everything on black and then suffer sudden colour blindness when it rolls a red. They want to bet it all on the toss of coin. So long as the coin has two heads and no tails. I doubt very much that if we all went into Paddy Powers and looked for our losing bets to be refunded we would be met with a smile and cash being handed over. Nor do we expect them to. When I placed a bet on number 7 I did so in the full knowledge there were 9 other horses in the race that were also trying to win. When my choice didn’t win I have to accept that and take the loss. But that rule doesn’t seem to apply to investors. These people were aware of the risks and won’t accept the consequences.  I know many pension plans and the like are tied up in this but that is a separate issue as to the competency of the pension fund administrators.

What our financial governors don’t seem to grasp is that if they have a bowl of money and keep dipping into it to repay the losing gamblers then when our health or education systems come looking for money in order to stay afloat the bowl will be empty.

So what can we do about it? Something needs to be done and as a father of two I worry about my kids getting ill in the current system. We have some experience of this and as with my stay I have the utmost respect for the nurses and doctors who do an incredible job under ridiculous circumstances.

 I believe the following, in no particular order, would go some way to helping restore a health system that we can all trust in. I am probably wrong as I am not one of those people elected to govern us, but I don’t hear anything remotely like a suggestion from anyone in the Oireachtas.

Change the culture in the Hospitals. Money, while important, cannot be the deciding factor.

• Allow our hospitals to decide where their budgets go. If they have a capital budget and decide they don’t need it, let them divert that money into care and front line support.
• Revisit the structures in the hospitals. There needs to be an acceptance that front line staff are the most important asset of the hospital.
• Understand that if you don’t help an ill person they are not going to get better. The problem is just postponed until the cure is provided.
• You can’t make decisions about something you don’t understand.
• Every member of the Oireachtas should be forced to give up their private health insurance. That way they will be encouraged to make decisions through the fear of having to go through the current public system.
• The minister for health should spend a weekend as a “patient” in an A & E ward. This is not a suggestion for a great photo opportunity. This is going through the A & E as if they were any ordinary patient.
• Ensure that the managers in hospitals understand that if you take staff from one area to help somewhere else you create problems for the remaining staff. This happened when I was there and the frustration it created for the nurses remaining in A&E was understandable as they suddenly had to cover three roles.
• The government should publish a clear numbered list of their priorities. That way it is simple to see whether health gets priority over roads, whether education gets the nod over sport, and exactly where on their list of priorities they slot repaying bankers who were bad at their jobs.

We need a dramatic change in our approach, our culture and our ethos. It’s as if the country needs a standstill moment, where we all just look around us and realise what’s truly important. If we do we will understand what we need to target and how we can get a system and society we can be proud of.

There is no magic cure for the health service. It’s going to be a long, tough road before we get a structure we need and crave. The same applies for the economy. There are tough decisions that need to be made. I am in agreement with the politicians on that one. However I cannot agree with their approach that as a nation we can neglect and abuse the core services that will allow us to grow and flourish as a nation. If we do turn our back on our nurses and doctors can we really expect them to be there for us when we need them most?

Children and questions are two inseparable parts of the one thing.

You can’t have children and not be regularly amazed by the depth and frequency of their questions. The beauty is in the development of their minds and personalities as they constantly question everything and everyone as they grow and mature through their formative years. And just in case you think that something is amiss if your child isn’t asking the questions, relax. There isn’t. Nine times out of ten they are standing behind the person who asked the question nodding in agreement like the wizened sages they will become in their later lives.

The Disbelievers we encounter (anyone without children who will stand staring in disbelief at the wit and wisdom of the younglings) are frequently left wondering how parents put up with the endless interrogations. When my Disbeliever friends ask me I merely shrug and claim ignorance of any secrets to surviving the onslaught. I never, ever tell them that although kids don’t come with off switches, parents are very good at developing a little muting switch in their own heads. Nor do I let them into the ultimate, if somewhat childish, retort that most of us parents resort to from time to time, which is answering every question with another question. I am sure there are some reading this who will be aghast at the thought of such mental torture being inflicted on Boo or Beanie, but honestly it hasn’t affect them …….much!

So what questions are we referring to?  Heres a sample of the current favourite questions from Boo, to  which beanie pays great attention and nods with the wisdom of her Fifteen months.

Are we there yet? - Asked repeatedly when on a long, medium or even short car journey. I have found that the frequency of the question is related to the length of the journey and the proximity to your destination. The closer you are the more frequent the question until in the last few miles it is like a stuck record looping on the one phrase. The response to kill that is simply to answer “Yes” as you motor along leaving the children staring out the window wondering where they are, for a minute at least.

Why can’t you drive faster Daddy? - This is usually thrown at me as I travel at the speed limit and we see the other cars speeding past in the outside lane. There isn’t a response to this that Boo will accept as if I’m not allowed to go faster she wants to know why the others are allowed. This frequently leads to Boo shouting at the other cars that they are “BOLD!”

Why? - The most common of questions. When used by the children in an investigative manner it is wonderful. It brings on different emotions when it is used to question every request you make of them. Again a simple response is “Why Not?” The look of mild confusion on their little faces is a wonder to behold.

Do you have a baby in there? - In fairness to Boo this wasn’t one of her questions. As I collected her from Montessori one afternoon her friends in the class came over and said hello. Then one piped up and pointing to my overweight belly asked this question. When the teacher told him that wasn’t polite and that I didn’t, he responded that another kid’s mummy had a baby in her belly and she wasn’t as fat as he is.

Who will be your little baby when I am grown up? - Common topic at the moment for Boo is who is going to be our little babies when she and beanie grow up. She is far from impressed by the response that they will always be our little babies. In fact she looks at me as if I have just said enough for her to have me committed.

Where’s your Gran and Granddad? – Incredulous disbelief that I have no Gran or Granddad any more. Thankfully it didn’t take too much more explanation. After all, if it’s a pet that’s dead they can go “to live on a farm”. If I said that with my grandparents the car with be packed up and the next family excursion would be to find the farm they were living on! We did the whole explaining they had got very old and then died and that led to Boo asking her Grans and Grandads how old they were and when they were going to die! Oh how we laughed!!

Is that person as old as God? - Boo actually asked this in a super market as we queued behind an gent at the checkouts. Thankfully he saw the funny side of it.

If this is Holy Gods house, where is he? - The question I have been asked by Boo and at least two godchildren / nephews. I think it was the disappointment that they didn’t get a personal audience for attending the church?

Can I marry a prince? - Asked after every Disney movie and also at the recent royal wedding. When D’Better Half replied that of course she could if she wanted, the next question addressed to her mammy was “Why didn’t you marry a prince then?” Charming. The question, not the prince!

Why do I have to be good? – A common question I’m sure and from pretty much November to December every parent, no matter how much they swear they wont, will resort to “Because Santa wont bring you stuff if you aren’t”. Ok, it’s not very moral to use that but if it works don’t knock it. But for the other ten months of the year it’s as if they know you don’t have any hold over them.

 This is often in tandem with Did you see me do that? – the ultimate challenge that could mean your child is heading for a career in the law courts. For Boo there is another defence of course. Was it Beanie who did that?

Can I have two more minutes (while holding up seven fingers)? – two more minutes before putting a game away, going home, getting ready for bed. I know Boo can count past ten, but I have never yet had the requested number of minutes match the shown fingers!

(Shouted up the stairs at 7am) Is Mammy still asleep? Should I still be quiet? – Need I explain this one? 

No matter what the questions keep coming and as soon as Beanie starts talking it will be stereo questions. Not that I would change their inquisitiveness for anything.

Would I?

Two weeks ago Boo was asking when the snow was going to be back. I tried explaining that it wont be back until the winter, all the time having the nagging memory in the back of my mind of a scout camp over and Easter in my youth when we awoke to a few inches of the white stuff on the landscape! With (some) confidence I told Boo that it would be nearly Christmas before she could expect to see snowflakes falling.

There was some debating of this and quite a bit of unhappiness at the thought of so many sleeps without any snowball fights. But then she realised that the absence of the snow forecast must mean that the nice weather is on the way. And sure enough the weather machinery operators obliged with a beautiful spell which will hopefully signal the start of the summer.

And Boo and Beanie have been making the most of it.

We are fortunate to live by the seaside so it doesn’t involve a trek to go for a walk by the sea. Boo adores it. She loves nothing more than grabbing an aunt or uncle to the tide line and hurling stones at the incoming waves. While the adults revert back to their formative years and attempt to perfect the skimming of the flat stones across the water surface, Boo perfects the art of lobbing the largest stones she can lift to create the biggest splash possible. Everyone expects she will land in the water herself but somehow she manages not to.

The sandpit at home is resurrected for another year and this time round beanie is old enough to get involved.

Boo builds the sand castle and beanie demolishes it.

Boo puts the spade down to pick up the bucket and beanie commandeers the spade for some urgent sand flicking exercises that cover both of them.

Boo makes her speciality Sand Pies and, yes you guessed it, Beanie decides to eat the sand. 

The Easter weekend always seems to mark the turning point of the activities. The plans no longer revolve around indoor games, arts and movies but are centred on getting out into the garden and playing in the sun. It’s wonderful to see how excited children can get just by being outdoors playing. And it’s the same in their Creche. The teachers have all said the kids love being able to have playtime in the garden. 

I hope it lasts. I know that when I was growing up, and I am sure many of you will be of the same view, our entire aim in life was getting outside. If there was a tree it was climbed, a river it was crossed and hazardous looking collection of wood beside a pile of nettles and thorns just had to be made into a ramp for the bikes. There were many a jump of legend where the joy of clearing the stinging undergrowth turned to horror as the bike plummeted to the ground and you realised there was a reason Evil Knevil had a ramp on the down side as well! 

With the turn in the weather Boo and Beanie are eager to spend every minute they can outside. I know there are many studies suggesting how children are becoming addicted to games and TV (and I am not arguing against them in every case) but I guess we are just lucky in that if the option is outside versus the DVD then the great outdoors is going to win. And that can only be good for them. But I am reminded that it wont be long before the confines of the back garden or helping mammy and daddy with the gardening will not be enough. The great adventure of “The Green” will have to be confronted one day. When that day comes Boo will have memorised the list of Dos and Donts. She will have a GPS tracking device attached to her wrist (or surgically implanted!!). I will have a new found need to undertake frequent walks up and down the estate and I will have a renewed concern about the state and upkeep of the public areas in the estate.

I am dreading the day already. (Imagine what I will be like when she goes away fro a weekend !!) 

But it isn’t this year, so for the next few months I will welcome the long nights and warm evenings. I will resurrect the BBQ and there will be plenty of fun memories to be had from this summer.

And then when they Boo and Beanie do break for The Green, I will long for the return of autumn and the short days with no time to play outside.

Beanie believes she is indestructible. She is not alone. All children at the beginning of toddle age seem to have that belief. Nothing scares them at all. Its only really after the first few bumps as they topple over when they begin to figure out that certain actions are likely to result in a further little bump. 

Beanie is into climbing at the moment. Chairs prove no obstacle. Cushions or Boos toys lying in the floor are merely a delaying factor and nothing to stop her progress. Daddy is actually quite a useful scaffold in order to get to the next level!  But the concept of what goes up must come down is, naturally enough, alien to her. As a result if you look away for a minute you are likely to return your gaze to a one year old balancing on the edge of a bean bag, heading over the arm of the sofa or weaving her way through the legs of the chairs. D’ Better Half and myself are getting quite good at the last minute dive across and grab of the babygro to stop Beanies late night breaks for freedom. 

She’s not quite walking yet. The crèche refers to what she does as Cruising. It’s that tottering along using chairs, walls, tables, and people for support that toddlers start off with. Beanie is F1 level at this movement. She starts at one side of the room and before you can say “Rubens Barrichello” she has manoeuvred herself around the sides of the objects and people to get over beside the TV. Then she stands there, three inches from the screen, staring at the characters moving around. Of course it didn’t take very long for her to realise that the button in the corner with the light on it, when pressed caused these people to vanish and Daddy to curse loudly as the 6/1 shot jumping the last fence in the lead disappears from view before he can see it! It’s a mixture of pride that she has figured this out and pure terror when you see the delight in her smile as she basically laughs at her Auld Fella having his telly viewing disrupted again. Saturday mornings quiet is frequently disrupted with cries from Boo that “she’s turned off the cartoons again, Daddy!” 

The teeter totter of balancing is next on her agenda and she looks at you first with delight as she lets go of the walker with both hands and balances for seems like an eternity but is in reality a few moments. The delight turns to surprise as she realises her legs are not holding out and then shock as the cushioning of her nappy makes contact with the floor. Not that it stops her at all a few more attempts and you think she is definitely getting the hang of it. Her birthday recently brought the delivery of a Princess Chair and she has decided it is much more fun and exciting to stand on that and balance. Fun for her? Yes. Not for me. 

I can see what she doesn’t see. The crash. The crying. The realisation that the crying hasn’t stopped. The dawning that a trip to the doctors is required. Of course none of that ever happens, but that’s how you react when you see them taking these chances. 

The key to managing this is to remember at all times that she isn’t going to do herself any damage. To remind yourself that you are actually watching her very carefully and that the taking of these risks is all a part of her growing up. As long as you make sure sharp edges and dangerous objects are out of the way then the likelihood is that the worst injury will be to yourself as you overreact and overreach to try and grab her. 

And when you do and wind up lying on the floor beside her, with those eyes looking down at you and the smile breaking into laughter, that’s when you realise that this is all a great big game to her. She just wants to get walking as quickly as she can. Then it will be running. And all the time she has her big sister to chase so there is urgency to this progression in her mind. 

For as long as that hunger to catch up is there she will push herself to progress.  And daddy will watch each step nervously, but also with pride.

There are two princesses in our lives.

Boo is now four and looking forward to starting “real school” in September. (Boo was Nearly-Four in earlier blogs but is growing so fast I can’t keep up with the name changes!)

Beanie is almost one. She too is looking forward to Boo starting school but possibly because she thinks she can go as well.  

Of course, there is a massive assumption that mammy and Daddy haven’t managed to make a pig’s ear of the application process for Boo. An assumption that may well wind up being held to ridicule in the coming months. It’s not that we aren’t able to make the applications but the entire process is complicated. For a start some schools require you to register the child in the September or October directly before the child starts school. Others want you to email them in advance of any nocturnal activities you and your partner may engage in which could result in a new pupil some five years down the road.

Then there’s the waiting. You have to wait until around this time of year or even another month or two in some cases before you find out if you have received the nod of approval for your son or daughter to enter the hallowed educational halls of your local primary school. I am the type of person who likes things to be organised and planned. I am far from comfortable in this hiatus where we have no knowledge of where she can go to school.

This all came to the front when the boss advised me that we needed to identify when we were planning to take our two weeks holidays. They need to be booked and “august is popular, you know!” We had discussed this and are all set to take the weeks around her starting school to have a few days off and then to ease her into settling in the school. That’s the point when you realise you don’t even know yet which school and as a result the definitive start dates are a bit unclear. Still the waiting is nearly over.

We should know by St Patrick’s Day which leaves about five months before the big day. And that’s probably the time when Boo will start having second thoughts about leaving her Montessori class! Of course starting school will bring with it changes. Not only for Boo but for Beanie and D’Better Half and Myself as well. The number of early finishes, half days, days off will be greatly increased and just like so many others who are products of the now sleeping Celtic Tiger, we will be dependent on the generosity of grandparents to help look after them. As in many households, both of us have to work. The option of one staying home with the kids is really just a pipedream and that s where Grannies and Granddads’ step in. We are fortunate in that both sets are living near us since we moved back to our home town. Both sets are also very open to helping us in any way they can. I would dread to think of how people who, for whatever reason, don’t have that support from family can cope.

This was highlighted in the past few weeks when having returned to crèche and Montessori following the Christmas gift giving, our princesses arrived home with gifts of coughs, colds and viruses which they were only too glad to share around the clan. This happens every year when the cold season kicks in. The kids in crèche pass the “Sharing” module with A-Stars every time based on their willingness to pass around every bug. Most of the time it’s not too bad but every now and again it hits hard. That’s when we realised how important the grandparents were. Be it minding the sick child while we went to work or taking the healthier child while the rest went to the doctors it made things manageable. Even after all that when they just offer to take the kids for an hour to give you a rest, well D’Better half and myself just thought it was all our birthdays come at once. 

That said, our princesses only had regular, run of the mill infections.

Something we were made eternally grateful for when close friends received news that their child has been diagnosed with a serious genetic illness. The illness is so rare that the doctors had never heard about it and the first specialist had heard about it but never seen a case of it before. As with all of those illnesses there are scales of problems the unfortunate child will have to face up to. At this stage it is very much a case of waiting to see what tests show and hoping for good news every time.

But it makes you realise how trivial some of the problems we have are. Sure the economy is in a builder’s skip being carted off to the local recycling centre. Of course everybody is feeling the pinch financially and having to make cut backs. Naturally it’s awful when your Princesses have colds and fevers. And its nerve wracking waiting for news of Boos acceptance into a primary school.

But it’s all in the hal ‘penny place compared to receiving life changing news like they did. It doesn’t even register on the scale of changes and difficulties they have to incorporate into their life. But they know they have a very close, very good family on both sides. They are aware they have many friends who are ready to support them in whatever way they can. They know they only have to ask for help and people will go out of their way to be there for them. Because no matter how bad our small problems are everyone will dig in and go the extra mile to help friends and family.

Every advance made will be greeted with delight by all but they accept there will be many, many small steps to be made. But those steps will be made and they will always have the support around them. And our friends will worry about their child’s progress. They will worry about what happens next. And we will continue to worry about a rise in prices, or a sniffle from the children.

But then isn’t that what parents do?