This year I have witnessed a friend’s death and another friend’s serious life-threatening illness. It has been a sad and often frightening time for them and their families and friends. The expertise, kindness, compassion and care of health professions has been so crucial in ensuring my friends were heard and seen and given the attention they so desperately needed.

I, like many people my age, often seek the expertise of health professionals whether they are from the western medical model or alternative practitioners. I am hugely grateful for the knowledgeable care I receive that nurtures and restores (some of the time) my not always compliant body and mind!

I recently had to make another appointment to see the neurologist. I was apprehensive as I feared he might say I had reached the end of the road in terms of medication…again. But pharmaceutical research has produced new medication and he was able to reassure me positively that this was likely to improve things . Just what I needed to hear!

I feel so grateful that I have access to a health service that, at the time of writing, is free at the point of demand, and despite all its shortcomings is a resource that many of us would lead lesser lives without. 

I am also grateful to those amazing people who provide such skilled services of massage, acupuncture, chiropractor, and kinesiology, the unsung army of professionals who enable me and many others to lead healthier happier lives.

I hope as the days get shorter we can remember those who are not as healthy as they would like to be and those who do not have access to supportive health professionals.