Half the river and all the way up to the sea

It's a commonplace to say you can be lonely in a crowd, but crowded hospitals incubate some particular strains of loneliness. This morning was spent sitting around the table in Ward 5 at Cherry Tree Hospital, with Nora, Dorothy, Leila, Helen and Hilda, trying to put a finger on what hospital loneliness is.

The very fact that we were gathered around a table was an issue. As Leila said, "To talk, you need a table to sit round." Chatting over cups of tea, taking turns with the conversation, is much easier with a table as meeting place. Unfortunately, many wards - especially some of the modern builds - have tiny day rooms and no large communal spaces. People can spend weeks sitting by their beds, in rows, cut off from close contact with one another.

The uncertainty of ill health is another factor. Not only might you be physically at a low ebb, medicated, and moved from ward to ward - but uncertainty as a continued state erodes confidence. As Dorothy said: "It's the general setup of it all, and then you don't know what you've got to face. Waiting to see what's going to happen. You're not as outgoing if you've got something on your mind, worry. This thing, it's happening to you, no one else but you. So you feel alone. Swimming half the river and all the way up to the sea."

Language is of course another problem. We are beseiged by misunderstanding. Whether we simply don't have the words, or the words have been taken away from us (by a stroke, medication, tiredness, dementia) it is a difficult thing to reach a happy meeting with these sounds we make. Just before I started the session, I spent a little time with a woman whose stroke had taken most of her speech, she spoke instead with smiles and hand pressure, and with her eyes. Leila's first language is not English and so a different set of problems appears. The word for loneliness in Polish is samonsc.

And what to do about loneliness? Helen: "Think of your close people. I would do that, after all they're the ones you really love."

Norma: "I approach people and ask them 'Would you like to talk?' People often say yes, they're pleased to know me. If you don't talk to em they think your too posh for them!"

Dorothy: "Every day is a little different - it can change sometimes for the good."

We discussed the photographs that people have by their beds. Norma again: "Bring a photograph of people you love - then you're near to them. You feel you're with them and they feel the same."

And what would a picture of loneliness be, I wondered?

Dorothy: "Empty!"