I feel honored and humbled to be asked to say a few words about Charlotte but I feel a bit of a fraud in doing so as although she was one of our practice patients, it was the practice nurses and district nurses who provided most of her care and so what I’m about to say reflects what they’ve been saying to me over the last few days.
For the last 6 months she had been coming to see our nurses three times a week to change her dressings and before that she was regularly seeing the district nurses. They all got to know her very well, not just as a patient but also as a professional colleague and ultimately as a friend.
She’d told them that that ever since she was a little girl she’d wanted to be a nurse and they talked together about how despite all that she’d been through she was looking forward to getting back to work. They described her as a real role model, a perfect nurse, someone who was always caring, kind and patient.
It was striking that she always asked how they were. She never complained about her own problems but focused on caring for others. She was genuinely interested in whether they were busy and how they were coping and there were even times when it was Charlotte who was offering support to the nurses and they cried together.
The day before Christmas when she was not feeling very well at all, she forced herself to get up, to go out and to go to town simply to buy some Christmas presents for the nurses. Her first thoughts were for others not for her own situation.
The surgery provided a safe place where she could cry when she was down and laugh and giggle when she was feeling better. One day they were chatting about how the deep the wound in her side looked as it was still not healing or filling out. One of the nurses reminded her how some women used chicken fillets to pad their bras with, something I obviously know nothing about, and she suggested that perhaps she could do the same with her side. They both burst in to fits of giggles at the thought and it became a running joke during subsequent appointments.
They shared ideas about music, with one of our nurse’s daughter wanting advice about the music she could use at her own wedding and Charlotte taking a CD to her own house group to listen to.
But one of the things that struck them most was how her faith shone through all her difficulties. In fact it seemed to grow stronger as time went on. She did not use many words to do this but nevertheless she provided a simple, pure and yet powerful witness despite her own illness.
All of us who had the privilege of meeting her and sharing in her journey were touched by that and will remember that. Charlotte has changed us, and changed us for the better.