Yes, M'Lady...

Did you win the lottery the other week?

I don't mean a tenner, which you spend on a fish supper and forget about by the time you have mopped the vinegar off your plate. Neither do I mean the £33M that was scooped up recently, because if you did, although I know PCNR is a great read and eveything, what on earth are you doing here?

I mean a significant amount of money. Not enough to retire on but enough to make a permanent difference to your life.

A few Grand that allows you to pay off your credit cards or perhaps even the motgage, re do the kitchen, finally take the family on the dream holiday that you always promised you would. That sort of thing.

Not something you might necessarily tell the neighbours about. If you did however, they wouldn't feel jealous of your good fortune but say 'good luck' to you, as they know you still have to go to work every day... It just wouldn't be such a burden. 

The actual amount needed to achieve this differs for everyone but the result is the same.

So imagine that moment when you see the numbers come up and realise that it's a reality. You aren't going to be sat in First Class swapping fashion tips with Jennifer Aniston any time soon, but you might not look quite so closely at the prices on the items in your weekly shop.

Let's face it, you would be pretty shocked really. You might check the ticket several times, get your partner to check it too so that you are absolutely sure you haven't gone number dyslexic since last night and perhaps threaten your children on pain of death to ensure they haven't cooked up some elaborate practical joke.

Well, sadly, Deborah did not win the lottery but she did recieve news, which I am pretty sure will have a similar, subtle but lasting effect on the rest of her life. 

Deborah Glover is now Deborah Glover MBE, for services to nursing and journalism, and I think you will all agree that there are few people more deserving. 

In the same way that you might be somewhat elated and perplexed at your luck and how you may have come to have such a significant lottery win, Deborah has absolutely no idea why she was nominated and has received the honour. This I am fairly certain is exactly the correct reaction to such an award.

I am not going to embarrass Deborah further and list all of her achievements, because I promised I wouldn't. Suffice to say that her work with organisations over the course of her career so far has almost certainly benefitted tens of thousands of patients.

I will leave it to Brian Booth our resident agitator and long standing/suffering friend of Deborah, to sum up in one short anecdote why she deserves the recognition. 

I worked with Deborah for many years, in a galaxy far, far away...

I won’t bang on about her journalistic skills, but will tell one of many stories I could share.

Deborah visited a hospital as part of her work for a journal. There was a heap of vomit in the corridor; she pointed this out to a registered nurse, who said something along the lines of ‘not my problem’.

So Deborah went and found a mop.

And that’s why ‘honour’ is a deserved term.

Brian Booth RGN, former clinical editor of Nursing Times, and deputy editor of the Journal of Wound Care

 

Congratulations Deborah. You deserve it. The PCNR Team.