I'd like to talk about a nurse called Shirin who looked after me when I was in hospital in Tehran about three years ago. I was twenty-two and had to have my appendix removed after collapsing at university.
I was in hospital for about five days. It was the first time I'd ever been admitted, and I was frightened, partly because the pain had come on so suddenly and partly because my parents were driving from Tabriz and couldn't arrive until the next evening.
Shirin was on duty the night after my operation. She was in her forties, very calm, and she seemed to have time for everyone even though the ward was full. What she did wasn't dramatic. She explained in simple words what the surgeon had done and what to expect over the next few days, so I wasn't lying there imagining the worst. She noticed I wasn't eating and found out it was because I was worried about being sick, so she brought me plain rice and told me exactly when it would be safe to try something else. And when I couldn't sleep at three in the morning, she sat with me for a few minutes and talked about her own son, who was studying engineering like me.
I remember her because she treated me like a person, not a case number. The doctors were skilled, but they came and went in two minutes. She was the one who made me feel safe. It made me realise how much of getting better is about feeling cared for. When I left, I wrote her a card, and I still think of her whenever I hear people talk about nurses being underappreciated.