We can sleep more soundly when heroes fly overhead

Hypochondriacs dream of having a hospital on their own doorstep – in our case it’s more a stone’s throw from the back door via an eight foot wall, but the analogy still holds.

There are many benefits of living beside a hospital – and not just for those who think they’re always ill – as we have discovered over the years for a variety of reasons, and not just because of the New Year’s Eve when one of the boys thought he had an appendix problem just after midnight.

There are also drawbacks of course; visitors would sometimes park on your back if you stood still long enough because the hospital is woefully under-resourced on that front.

One man parked across our gate and was about to get an earful – until he beamed to say that his wife had just had their first baby and he was so desperate to get in that that he’d have left the car in the middle of the road. That changed my tune.

Another downside is the hospital’s thin blue line which means that staff cannot smoke on the grounds but they are free to puff away to their decaying heart’s content on the other side of the marker – thus littering our little road with their butts and the remnants of their coffee cups.

Ambulances aren’t an issue because you’d be hard-pressed to find a hospital without them.

When we moved in first and saw the flashing blue lights fly past the house, we’d look out the window to see what the emergency was; now you don’t even bat an eye.

And up to recently a source of mild annoyance would have been the fact that we’re in the flight path for more helicopters than South Armagh at the height of the Troubles.

Of course you know that every chopper is only doing its job, bringing someone to hospital for treatment – perhaps lifesaving surgery, perhaps a broken hand, maybe a pregnancy or just some problem that a GP couldn’t deal with.

And you also know that the hospital was there before your house; if you wanted a quiet life with only the sound of birdsong to wake you after dawn, you don’t buy a home in the heart of the city.

But it’s still only human to punch the pillow when you’re awoken in the small hours by the sound of the roof vibrating and the room pulsating as a whirly bird makes its way in to land.

Recently residents who live in the shadow of Dublin’s Mater Hospital opposed the provision of a helipad, despite the hospital doctors’ own claim that such a facility would save nine extra lives a year.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.