If we were to view the NHS as a person instead of a mechanical system, then we would have to conclude that she is the most used and abused person in our history. She is someone with a great heart, incredible talents for healing people and who wants to do the right things for people, but she has completely lost any sense of boundaries or the ability to say ‘no’. Therefore, she is walked over and treated as a state-sponsored prostitute for anyone to come and do with exactly as they want, as if there were no consequences. However, as a result of this behaviour, the cells which make her up have become damaged and infected, her tissues are breaking down and she is dying. It is not too late for her to be mended and revived, but she must learn that she cannot say ‘yes’ to everybody and everything that is demanded of her and as she learns more appropriate boundaries, she will help others amend their own behaviour to create a loving, sustainable and mutual relationship that can last long into the future.
Black Friday demonstrates just how utterly consumerist we have become as a nation and we treat the NHS as if she were a commodity to be ‘had’. There is little sense of personal responsibility with diet, alcohol, drugs, exercise, maintaining healthy relationships and managing stress and yet we have a developed a meta-narrative that we can live exactly as we please because in the end the NHS will fix it. We give little thought to developing our personal and corporate well-being and why should we, because when we fall apart the NHS will fix it?!
We can be utterly disorganized and forget to renew our prescriptions and then shout and scream at our GPs receptionist to ensure we get our tablets (that we might not have needed to be on, had we taken more care of ourselves) turned around in a 24 hour period, as if it was someone else’s fault that we forgot we were running out of our own medications. We can fail to 
turn up to appointments when there are already long waiting lists, because who cares if the appointments are wasted – they are ours to waste after all! We can run to the A&E when we fall over drunk and hit our head, or get into a fight with someone we’ve never met whilst under the influence because we haven’t bothered to learn any healthy patterns of processing the anger we feel. We can go to the walk in centre with a 3 hour old sore throat, demanding treatment, instead of trusting our incredible immune systems. We can continue to eat far too much meat, over injected with antibiotics, whilst we head towards the super-bug apocalypse. We can drive too fast and cause near fatal accidents (if it wasn’t for the seat-belt and airbags) and some clever surgeon will put us back together. We can smoke our lungs into a tar filled bog or stuff our arteries full of cholesterol and sugar crystals because there is medication (that is super expensive by the way, but subsidized so we don’t care) that will fix our ill-behaviour. We can experience the love, kindness and generosity of our elderly relatives, but dump them into hospital for Christmas, when they might spoil our fun. We can stuff ourselves with food, until our joints can’t take it because then we’ll either get new ones, or a bariatric surgeon will half the size of our stomach for us.
OH THE GOOD OLD NHS!! She will sort out all our problems……except that we are killing her. We have believed a lie that we can live exactly how we please as if there were no consequences. If we love the NHS and she loves us, then she is going to have to learn some boundaries and we are going to have to change our behaviour……..
