The trials and tribulations of a student mental health nurse: My Friend Hind

It is funny how when you are growing up you never think that anything can happen to you, you believe that you are invincible, until such a day arrives when things go wrong, you become unwell and then the life you lived where you were plodding along and getting on with it suddenly changes.

For you see this is where my friend Hind comes into the story, my friend Hind is the sort of person who even when the world is crashing down around her feet she will laugh and have a smile on her face, she has an ability to see the good in people even when others can't and she will give you her last penny or food from her fridge if you do not have any, to her detriment. She has always been like this.

I first met Hind when we were 13 years old and I had moved to London to start secondary school, I grew up in Bracknell in Berkshire and moved to London when I was 12, I started school from the second yr (not sure what yr this would be now as they changed the year systems after i left secondary school but i was 13yrs old) when i moved here and even though she was in a different class to me we became firm friends. I don't ever remember the exact circumstance of our meeting or even the process of becoming friends but it happened all the same, throughout our school life i stayed at her house sometimes 4 nights in a week, we used to do some crazy stuff and we would sit up all night long giving each other foot massages and telling stories and getting up to all sorts. Her mum liked me a lot too and i was always welcome in her home, you could say i was an extension to her family.

Hind had a life though that from the very start was not the easiest, moving here to live with her mother from Morocco and coming to live in a country when she did not speak very good English at all was hard enough, but the life she had while living with her other family back home in Morocco, all the while her mother had moved here already to make a life for herself before she then sent for her daughter to follow was quite appalling. But in the face of adversity she was able to at such a young age have that smile on her face and get on with it. Hind then moved to London from Casablanca and was living in Bayswater when I became friends with her. I remember her being such a small thing, with crazy hair and big brown eyes and a personality and confidence that i envied, she was never scared to say what she thought to people and teased the boys with her cheeky ways.

When i stayed at her house we used to walk up to Whiteleys in Queensway and go up to the 3rd floor and in the stair well there was these big windows, we used to open them and just sit there watching the world go by and chat about things, i am surprised we never got caught by the security either, but there was no shops on the 3rd floor and the stairwell was always really quiet. One time me and Hind sat there and we tried to write the story of her life, me with pen and paper and her telling me everything she had gone through up to when she moved over here, I couldn't believe how she was able to be such a positive little thing and yet have dealt with so much in her already short life. As time went on we left school and her mother went away for a year she asked me to live with her so she was not on her own; I was working part time in McDonald's after deciding to leave 6th form in the middle of doing my art A-levels as i was not the most structured person back then and just could not focus on my studies and so there we were living together at her house, I got her a job as a floor manager with me and she loved working, she put her heart and soul into the job and got on with everyone and was well liked, to be honest i have not met many people who didn't like her from day one.

Months later i moved back home and Hind's life moved in another direction, we went about doing our own things and because this was a time before mobile phones we lost touch altogether, I moved many times after leaving home at the age of 18 and Hind also moved away to South London, then after quite a few years i was going to this training college i was sent to by the job centre and while i was there i bumped into her mum also there doing the same thing as me, i couldn't believe it, i asked her where Hind was and how i could get hold of her, she said she would take me to where she lived. A few weeks later we went to where Hind was living and she was not there, but her friend Nicola who live beneath her told us how she was at Glastonbury and would not be back for a few days. So i waited and then made the journey again to see her; it was that same old cheeky happy face that greeted me at the door. It was like there had never been that gap of years of where we had lost touch.

We spent hours chatting away and rekindled our friendship, i stayed with her many times and we went out clubbing and raving and getting up to our old crazy ways; it was so much fun, especially the time when we went to Leicester Square to a club there and as we were getting ready she gave me a valium she said it would give us energy etc, next thing you know we are a bit drunk in the club, she is dancing away and i fall asleep on one of the couches and that's where i stayed until we left at about 4am. Well that taught me to not take something without knowing what it does, i must have looked like a right berk snoring me head off in the middle of a club with the bass so loud the speakers were shaking. Times were hard, we were both skint most of the time, but you don't need money to enjoy being in someone's company, not long after she came to mine for a crazy night of debauchery, we had a silly falling out, more on my part than hers and then due to it still being before the time of email and when mobiles had only been around a very short time, she lost her phone and i got a new number, we both moved house and completely lost touch again.

10 years down the line and back to the present day i finally found her on Facebook, i couldn't believe it, sent her a message and then i when i got a reply i was so happy, i went to see her in South London and we talked for hours, she told me all the places she had worked, like the Millennium Dome, the London Eye, I-Max cinema, William Hill to name a few, she always loved working and was never afraid to put in the effort so she would have a wage at the end of the month, i always loved this about her, for Hind has always been a worker, never shy of putting in a bit of hard graft, so when she told me about some of the other things she had gone through and why she was not working any more, i sat there with my mouth open catching flies. She told me how since i had last seen her some of the things she had been through and is still going through, i couldn't believe my ears, she had been unwell, suffered from alopecia and lost huge chunks of her beautiful curly crazy hair, which was mostly grown back, she had suffered and still does a bit from depression party due to some of the things that were going on in her life (which i wont go into) and used to cope by drinking heavily and smoking like a chimney.

Her body just was not coping with this barrage of abuse and then she started to get really sick, now for an already slim girl to becoming almost a size zero, not through choice either, both of her kidneys started to fail and she became very sick, the doctors couldn't find out why this happened, even after so many tests, they said in the end that it seemed like because Hind seemed to give up on her body and her life, her body was giving up on her. Imagine that after coping with what was already such an unfair life to living in another country, to moving out from home to escape and live in a strange part of the city to then having more stress and anguish to deal with to the getting sick, well it's enough to make anyone want to give in; but she didn't, she was put on dialysis 3 times a week for 4 hours at a time, but the denial and the feeling on not caring enough about herself she didn't turn up most of the time choosing to get drunk and carry on living a life that her body couldn't not take any more anything to cope with this shit that life unfairly dealt her.

Many times the hospital would have to phone the police to go to her house and check she was ok and get them to bring her to the hospital for her dialysis when she would not turn up for a whole week, i think Hind just felt like what's the point, for things were not going well, she had fallen out with her mother and 2 of her closest friends myself and Nicola she had lost touch with. Sometimes she was so unwell from the kidney failure that she could not even crawl across the floor to the toilet in which to be sick, unable to hardly eat meant that her strength levels were always low. When i came back into her life around the same time as Nicola her other close friend she suddenly felt like things were looking up, she had a lovely new boyfriend called Jamie who treated her really well and started to go to the hospital for her dialysis when she was supposed to; she told me that she felt happier that things were looking up and she felt things were worth fighting for.

I went to see her regularly and she also came to me too and we were back enjoying each other's company like the old days, only with less of the crazy stuff; the one day i was in sainsburys with my daughter and i got a call from her boyfriend Jamie saying Hind had been rushed into hospital after suffering from a fit on the Monday, i had only seen her the day before when i took my daughter down to see her for the day, Jamie said that she suddenly said to him that she couldn't see and the next thing she was convulsing, he phoned an ambulance and they took her to hospital where she then suffered more fits and then her heart stopped, they has to perform CPR on her to bring her back to life and that now she was in intensive care on life support. I came off the phone and suddenly started shaking and as i walked back through the isle with my daughter in the trolley i was sobbing, i said to my girl that we had to go home, i needed to go and see my friend and make sure she was ok. I don't even know how i managed to drive that short distance home without crashing as i couldn't see through the tears.

I went to the hospital that night and met Jamie, i held her hand and kissed her face and told her i loved her so much and to please be ok. I went to the hospital every day and sat there taking turns with other friends who visited and waited for her to get better, i knew how much she would hate being in hospital when she did wake, as i had come to sit with her a few times when i could while she had her dialysis, and she always said it felt like she was surrounded by death. they kept her sedated and attached to tubes galore while they monitored a swelling due to fluid on the brain, i was so worried she might never wake or wake and not be the same, but a week later i walked into the ward and happened to be the first friend on scene and she was awake with the breathing tube removed, she was delirious and drowsy from the medication, but she recognised me and i cried my eyes out and hugged her tight; she was unable to speak properly from having a tube down her throat for so long and was hallucinating and coming out with all manner of waffle. I was just so happy she was awake and alive.

Finally she was released from hospital and allowed to come home with the promise she would be properly looked after and is now sort of back to her old self, she is on so much medication to keep her well and its heartbreaking to see her go through so much, her memory was a little hazy and she forgot i had 3 cats and various other minor things. But you know what even after all this, even though she is still suffering from kidney failure and is not even on a list yet for a transplant, even after feeling the effects of depression, she is still my same old Hind underneath, still able to give give give and put a smile on her face, to know that the road ahead is a long one and continue living and getting on with it like she always had done. I don't know many people who can go through so much in such a short lifespan and still have a pretty good mental attitude.

She is an inspiration to me and whenever i feel like life is taking the piss and giving me a hard time, i look at her and think well i just need to get on with it.

I want to thank her for being in my life and knowing that even though she is not able to do many things right now, that she will always be there for me and that means the world. She is a true friend and our friendship is already 20 years strong and i know that we still have another 20yrs to come as there is no way she is going to let a little thing like kidney failure beat her, that would just be too dam easy.

Hind. What an amazing person you are. I love you with all my heart.