Comfort and joy

She was more than 100 years old and a typical older lady from Oldham. She had married and had children quite early, and her husband and children had all died: she had outlived them all. 

She didn’t really have friends, so she was quite lonely. But there’s a lot of pride in that generation: the feeling of, ‘I don’t want to cause bother, I’ll manage’.

It was a basic terraced home in Chadderton, a suburb of Oldham, with a steep, narrow staircase that she went up and down each day. She kept the place very clean, and in a state that would have been lovely if people had come to visit. I can’t remember the reason for my visit that day. It might have been a chest infection or something relatively minor, she wasn’t too unwell. 

But what struck me was that there were no decorations up; no cards, no tinsel, no decorations, no tree, nothing. I’m Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas myself but it was all very stark and made me feel very sad.

Christmas was going to be like any other day for her: she was going to spend it by herself. She had all the food she needed but it really hit me how alone she was. 

I had looked after her for many years, and she always made me a cup of coffee. From the very first time I met her, when she was in her early 90s, she said: ‘You know, I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up.’ She was never depressed, she just felt it was a little bit cruel that she kept waking up each morning.

I just wanted to cheer her up that day. I would normally have had to go straight back for the afternoon clinic but we closed at lunchtime on Christmas Eve so staff could get off early. 

So, I went to the local supermarket and I bought some cards, tinsel, whatever decorations they had, some Sellotape. I didn’t tell her what I was going to do; if I had, she would have been angry with me and told me I wasn’t to do that.

When I reappeared, she was a bit overwhelmed. She had a parlour, a smarter room, but she lived in the kitchen, so I put the decorations up there. I spent maybe an hour with her. We sat talking about previous Christmases when she was a child, how different it was. And she was so happy. I felt 20 feet tall when I left.

I spoke to her a couple of days later and she was still happy. It was so simple and wasn’t a lot of time out of my day, but it made such a difference to her. 

I have had other memorable things happen at Christmas. Situations where I have inadvertently been given a tea or coffee laced with rum or some other spirit – thankfully, only a small amount – and been worried about being fit to drive home or do my afternoon clinic. I’ve had some amazing and some really bad mince pies. And lots and lots of Quality Street. 

But that one was special. It made me very aware how lucky I was that I had people around me. 

Unfortunately, I’ve lost my parents recently. So, I’m very aware of how important family is. You must not lose touch with the older generation, the stories they can tell you, their wisdom. 

Whatever the holiday, whether it be Ramadan, Diwali, the Jewish festivals, or Christmas or Easter, these are times when people are a little more vulnerable, especially if they are isolated. Christmas TV always talks about family and togetherness, and that can really accentuate people’s loneliness.

I was an NHS GP for just under 20 years – 17 as a GP partner – before I left to do private general practice. Now we have clinics across Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire, and demand is rising at quite a frightening rate. And the majority of patients we’re seeing are people who are struggling to get to see their NHS GPs or feel they’re not getting enough time with them. 

The reason we are all doing this is because we don’t feel we can do our job properly in the NHS system. None of us are in it for money; it is about having more time with people, making them feel valued. A lot of the GPs who work with us are NHS GPs as well; working in the private environment is almost therapy for them.

If we are going to maintain the caring side of general practice, we need to take the pressure off GPs. And we need more GPs.

I don’t do home visits now because we are so busy – and it does trouble me because I am aware there are people who are becoming increasingly immobile. We do try to mobilise as many services as we can to help them, including other GP services who do house calls. 

But I miss home visits. You can glean a lot from seeing someone in their home environment, about how well they’re eating, how well they’re looking after themselves. That social aspect of the GP role, that social awareness, is so important, especially at holiday times. 

Adam Simon is a private GP based in Cheshire and clinical director of AJ Primus Healthcare