At the time, I was working as a nurse in a remote town in Saudi Arabia. The hospital was small and divided into just a Male Ward and Female Ward. It had an operating theatre and an Accident and Emergency Department.

I was nursing on the Male Ward and many patients were long term because of the high volume of road traffic accidents. Many were unfortunately paralysed and needed complete care. Often patients would then go home, to be nursed by their families.

We had one gentleman that had been supposedly “looked after” at home after being paralysed in a road accident. Obviously he hadn’t been looked after. He was skeletal and his body was a mass of deep pressure sores, there was hardly an inch of him where the skin was intact. It was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen, he was brought in, screaming in pain. He even had the rug he’d been laying on growing into his backside.

He was in agony and the smell was horrific. I was determined to get this poor poor man better. We sorted out his pain relief and set to work cleaning, packing dressing his wounds. I was assigned to this task and it took hours and hours every day, for months and months. The language barrier was there but it didn’t matter. Kindness and compassion doesn’t need words. We formed a friendship built out of his trust and my determination. As his wounds very slowly healed , he started to smile. The doctors that spoke Arabic would translate for us and he said such lovely things to me that made me well up with tears.

He remained a long term patient and it was very sad to say goodbye to him when I left to go back to the UK. It was 22 years ago now, but I’ll never forget him.

I found some old photographs to show. Here I was invited to have tea with the patient's family which was very special and memorable.

Nice...

Nigerian Doctor/Nurse go cover nose run from the patient