Archive News
How to ensure a hospital visit doesnÕt leave the patient feeling worse
Date Published: {J}
After a couple of visits to different Galway hospitals recently, I’m more convinced than ever that there should be a protocol to observe when visiting someone on their sick bed.
First off, if someone is sick, they rarely need to hear about other people who are also sick – and more importantly they never need to know of anyone who has recently died.
Equally, given that they’re in hospital one presumes they have an illness of their own to worry about. So they don’t need to hear about any of yours. If you have aches or pains – or even just a bad day at the office – tell it to someone who actually cares. Don’t bore the patient with your problems.
Talk to them about things that might actually take their mind off their illness for a few minutes – sport, music, politics (Presidential or office), gossip, the X-Factor, whatever.
You should also bear in mind that there is no consolation for patients in the realisation that things could be worse, and that down the corridor there are people who are sicker than they are. Deploying that sort of logic is like telling a child to eat broccoli because there are starving children in Africa.
And on the subject of food – unless you’re in a very private and posh hospital – there is every chance that the food is of the boarding school variety; so a big dirty burger or snack box could be as welcome as Sean Gallagher and his bag of tricks at a Fianna Fail fundraising dinner.
Equally, on the subject of drink, unless specifically requested, do not bring them Lucozade. A glucose drink is very refreshing when it’s newly opened and ice cold, but it tends to lose its lustre when it’s warm and flat and stickier than fly paper hanging from the kitchen light.
Ditto, skip on grapes and fruit – it shows a shocking lack of imagination when you could be bringing them a book or a newspaper (obviously we’d recommend the Tribune, but feel free to take your choice) or a magazine.
Under no circumstances is a helium balloon appropriate unless you’re visiting your eight year old niece; grown-ups wouldn’t want giant balloons if they were in the whole of their health so it beggars belief why anyone would think it might cheer them up with they’re sick. Settle for a get well card if you want to go down that route.
Most of all, do not outstay your welcome; ten minutes unless otherwise requested should do it. And if others come in while you’re there, then withdraw gracefully to allow others to chat a while.
I know I’m extremely fortunate that the only times I’ve ever spent a night in hospital in my life have been for my own birth and as a parent, staying with my children when they were small.
But I do know that, if I was there, nothing would make me more ill than having to divulge the details of what caused me to be there in the first place, to every Tom, Dick and Harry who dropped in for a chat.
Worst of all is when visitors come out in empathy, simulating chest pains or the Ebola virus as though this gives them a greater understanding of your condition. I don’t need to know about their aches and pains any more than I would want them to know about mine.
After all, one presumes that the purpose of the visit is to cheer a sick person up – not make them long for a spell in solitary confinement or isolation just so they can have a bit of peace and quiet away from the likes of you.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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