Anthea Allen - Life, Death and Biscuits

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First published by HarperElement 2022

FIRST EDITION

Text Anthea Allen 2022

Cover layout design by Holly Macdonald HarperCollinsPublishers 2022

Cover photographs Hinterhaus Productions/Getty (main image); Shutterstock.com (background)

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Anthea Allen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008506452

Ebook Edition February 2022 ISBN: 9780008506469

Version: 2022-01-07

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For my wonderful family who love me and stand by me no matter what.

Elisabeth, my support, my partner, my safe space, my love. Our life and devotion deeply rooted together for over 30 years my honest and most constructive critic and biggest fan.

My extraordinary, brilliant and incredible children, Claudia and Peter.

Ilaria, my adopted Italian eye-liner daughter and kindred spirit.

Nurses are beautiful, hilarious, tireless heroes.

Claudia Gilbert-Allen, 2020

This situation has united us all, in a way that we still do not understand and for which there is no word that defines it, but that will always be there.

Mnica De La Fuente Izquierdo, 2020

The entire premise of Intensive Care Medicine is purely built on and around the strength, foundation, courage, versatility, extraordinary skill, knowledge and humanity of our Critical Care Nursing Cadre.

Dr Jey Jeyanathan, 2021

I am a Critical Care nurse, a senior sister at St Georges University Hospitals NHS Trust in Tooting, south-west London. I am the lead for nurse recruitment for adult Critical Care. I am also a mum, partner, daughter, sister, friend, and I have a huge capacity to love.

Yet I am a nurse through to my bones. It was what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was this job that connected me on such an incredible level with the superb team of nurses that I have the very great honour to work with. This team who united and fought through Covid twice.

In March 2020 the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, said on the BBCs evening news: As the peak of the coronavirus pandemic approaches we need more ventilators to fight Covid-19. These were in short supply across the globe. Rolls-Royce, Dyson and other manufacturing firms were to make more ventilators, and the British government ordered hundreds of ventilators from China.

There was no mention of Critical Care nurses, who are skilled, trained and competent at safely using the ventilator, a complex piece of machinery. Not many doctors know how to programme a ventilator. It doesnt matter how many ventilators there are, Critical Care nurses are required to operate them. We dont have enough Critical Care nurses they are what we need most.

Matt Hancocks statement, and simply wanting to do something for my amazing team, put me on the first step of a long road that would eventually become this book. And it all began with a request for biscuits.

I wrote one email, a plea for help. That was the beginning. I sent it to a group of local contacts, friends and neighbours, just asking for biscuits. The response was incredible. I ran out of words to say thank you, so I started to tell stories to explain the situation that we the nurses on Critical Care at Georges found ourselves in.

Once a week I would send an email, and each time I was astonished by the response. My emails were forwarded and read by people who were in lockdown all over the world Id receive replies from Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. There was interest in the national media and celebrities, not to mention the floods of donations and incredible generosity from individuals and organisations desperate to help. People wanted to hear about what it was like on the front line, which was all the encouragement I needed to keep writing.

As the weeks and then months of the pandemic progressed, I was numbed by the ordeal of fighting the virus on the front line, and I felt a responsibility for our junior nurses. They were young and many were so far from home. Their fresh faces looked terrified. I remember being young and scared when I started working on Critical Care, and I wasnt sure how they were managing.

I, of course, want to protect their privacy in this book, but most of all I want to protect the privacy of the patients, who are vulnerable and place their trust in us. They have to do so and that must always be respected. All the stories you are about to read are true, but I have chopped and changed details so that no one can be identified. On occasion I have asked permission of the patients or their next of kin in order to include their names and their stories.

The doctors were phenomenal, but it is always about the doctors. This is a book about a family of nurses, Covid and love. I want you to be able to see what we saw. The extraordinary, the shocking, the impossible the gory. The hideousness of injury and loss. The triumph over adversity and the little moments of amazing that are always just around the corner whenever nurses are involved. We get to see all the faces of humanity. Nothing makes sense and everything makes sense.

I hope in some way this book might help us to understand and to remember.

Anthea Allen, February 2022

It was a Wednesday in early March 2020 when I returned to work. I had been in Dorset for a few days, staying with my parents. My father was taking his final church service as an Anglican priest after 63 years in the ministry (he was ordained at York Minster on my mothers twenty-first birthday). There were celebrations at their local parish church. My father led his last service, preached his last sermon and gave his last communion.

St Marys is a Grade I listed building in Sturminster Newton, built in 1486. Its a quaint church with a carved wagon roof, glorious stained-glass windows and narrow wooden pews, with each person kneeling on an individually made hassock. The average age of the parishioners was about 70, it seemed, on a Sunday morning, but a little sectioned-off area with tiny wooden chairs and a display of childrens illustrated Bibles and stories of Christian faith involving a family of squirrels said otherwise.

My parents ginger cat waited outside, sitting on the stone wall as she did every Sunday, waiting patiently to walk them home. My father was cheered and toasted with Prosecco and cake, and given a gift that all the local churchgoers had contributed towards.