October challenge: sign. The American Hospital

Another day, another hospital.

Today it’s the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. Just outside the entrance is a garden with the Stars and Stripes flying in the breeze. In 1992 this garden was presented to the American People ‘in grateful recognition of those who served here 1942-1945’.

The Churchill hospital was built in 1940 and then used by the United States Army Medical Services from 1942 until the end of the war. Now it’s engaged in another sort of battle in its new guise as the Oxford Cancer Centre where it houses research and teaching facilities for the University of Oxford as well as providing treatment for patients.

I'm here for an MRI scan. The radiographers always seem so young and so …. bouncy. Chatty, friendly, happy. I engage a young Antipodean in banter as he inserts a line in my arm; he describes himself as a ‘Tazzie’ (a Tasmanian) and we talk about his plans to return home in March next year. And ours to visit Mollymay.

It’s all over in about 10 minutes; results next week.

If you are going to have to deal with cancer, it’s not a bad place to do it.

View large to read the inscription.