Patrick Comerford
It is three years today since I suffered a stroke while I was visiting Milton Keynes during Saint Patrick’s Weekend in 2022. Charlotte realised immediately what was happening and responded without hesitation. Without waiting for an ambulance, she called a taxi and took me to Milton Keynes University Hospital.
Soon after I was admitted, I was also found to have Covid-19. I was later moved from Milton Keynes to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, and in all spent two weeks in hospital.
Over the past three years, I have had countless hospital visits in Milton Keynes, Oxford, Sheffield and London, and visits to a variety of NHS clinics, for tests, consultations and procedures. There have been seven hospital and clinic visits so far this year, and four to my GP.
Some of these visits are par for the course, as follow-up visits after my stroke. But there have been other concerns too, including monitoring my pulmonary sarcoidosis, with tests for my breathing and the condition of my lungs and heart, as well as monitoring my vitamin B12 levels and my balance. There have been CT scans, XRays, bone density tests, cholesterol counts, blood tests, check-ups and results.
During one visit for three more tests, I jested that I had ‘more tests this year than the English Cricket XI’ – to which a Facebook friend replied in a similar vein: ‘Hopefully ‘out’ as quickly as the English Cricket XI.’
I suppose I ought to expect much of this is going to happen at my age, anyway. It seems my asthma has got a little worse and my balance is not what it ought to be – which might explain the nasty tumble I had in London last month, ending up in the A&E department in University College Hospital London.
In between those times, the grounds of Milton Keynes University Hospital has offered many walks, and I also enjoy the variety of sculptures along the hospital pathways and in the grounds and gardens.
Each time I get off the bus, I see a sculpture representing medicine at the hospital entrance. The large work by Ekkehard Altenburger, representing an Aesculapian arch in silver grey, beige and red granite, marks the way into the hospital. Stone carved bottles, jars and mortar and pestles feature on the top of the stone archway, representing an apothecary, an ancient symbol of medical practice.
Ekkehard Altenburger is an internationally renowned London-based sculptor and stonemason, and his work is part of the way marking scheme, designed to help guide patients and visitors around the hospital as it continues to grow, and seeking to create an environment at the hospital is positive and uplifting for patients, visitors and staff.
At first, his sculpture caused controversy among visitors to the hospital. But it is funded from the capital allowance for infrastructure improvements to develop the hospital roadways and access. The artworks are commissioned by MK Arts for Health, an arts based charity, or loaned to MK Arts for Health, which designed a system of panels to complement the hospital’s way-finding zones.
Altenburger’s work often operates within an urban setting, and aspects of architecture and landscape are major influences on his work. He has produced public artworks in Switzerland, Italy and Portugal as well as the UK.
He studied sculpture at the University of the Arts, Bremen, Germany, and Edinburgh College of Art, and has an MA from Chelsea College of Art (University of the Arts), London. He has worked as a master mason at Holy Cross Cathedral in Schwabisch Gmund in south Germany. He works from a studio in London and is also an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Visual Arts in Hong Kong Baptist University.
When I was back in Milton Keynes Hospital last week to receive the result of another round of tests, I went back to see the magnolia tree that became, in many ways, a symbol of my recovery from that stroke three years ago.
During those two weeks, Charlotte and I spent many hours, day-by-day, sitting beneath the flowering buds of that magnolia tree as we dreamt and talked about our future together.
The tree seems to be a little late in flowering this year, perhaps. But seeing it once again last Tuesday was a reminder of the need to protect, appreciate and invest in the NHS, and a reminder too of the care and love I have received over the past three years and that have helped my recovery.
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