Marinko

 

In Spinal Injury Nursing, you will always have your favourite patients; the admission to a spinal rehab centre lasts for up to and in many cases well beyond 6 months, so there is plenty of opportunity to really get to know your patient and their families so very well.

In general our unit in Sheffield had on average 100 "new" admissions yearly so in my time there I must have seen around 1600 people coming through the doors and into our lives .
I can think of ten or so patients that will always linger in my mind. Eve, an affable despot and serial socializer from Nottingham, Richard, a difficult but ever so likable teenage quadraplegic that I used to use many unprofessional type nursing methods on to just to get him to eat; Neil , the charismatic army guy with a big heart and courage to match his many injuries; Hatim the 13 year old boy injured in the Iraq war who finally adopted a Yorkshire accent when he left us and who loved Finlay with a passion; Sue, a brittle and hilarious salt-of-the-earth fitness fanatic from Manchester--The list could go on and on and on. Many of these characters I still keep in touch with, and their life stories after spinal cord injury have been many and indeed varied .

Marinko was one of these people. I first met him when he was admitted to us in the early 1990s after a fall from a ship in Great Yarmouth when he sustained a lower back fracture and total paraplegia.
A non English speaker from Croatia, he was a challenge on so many levels to nurse. We had to get students from Sheffield University to act as interpreters ( as I remember,one was not as good as the others and confused the Croatian for pillow with the word for chicken- which in its own way caused much hilarity)

Marinko also had problems with, shall we say , assertive Sheffield women, and had quite an "old fashioned" Eastern European attitude to gender roles, which was a challenge to him and us, as most of his carers were opinionated Yorkshire women.
But he was charming and funny and "blossomed" under the intimate and at times unrealistic environment a rehabilitation centre provides and I considered him to be a friend when he left us to be with his family in a tiny village outside the city of Split

The day we said goodbye, he gave me a bunch of flowers,wrapped in brown paper .we shook hands and hugged and he kissed me hard on each cheek and called me “ brother” and I had to bite my lip as he wheeled away to an uncertain future

Over the past 16 years or so, we have always communicated infrequently by letter. His correspondence was always charming and on the surface optimistic, but it did hint at the huge adaptation problem Marinko had with his disability.
A few Christmas’ ago, I was surprised not to have seen a card from him, and I was saddened to receive a letter from Marinko's brother a few months after that.
In a note that sounded very much like Marinko his brother states simply:-

Dear Mr Gray,
I am using this opportunity to inform you that my dear brother and your friend Marinko has lost a long battle with his disease and passed away on the 29th of December 2007. The funeral was held in the local cemetery on 31st December 2007
I wish also to extend my honest gratitude for all your support,true and sincere friendship you have been providing to Marinko through all these years.
Sincerely

Maiodrag.