The past 12 months have resulted in a very long and winding journey. I have spent a lot of time in hospital wards. The hours I spent there over the past year are more than the aggregate of the time I had been in hospital over the previous 61 years.

Whether the ward is red, yellow, brown, green or blue, I passed days, weeks and even months visiting on a daily basis. The most recent weeks have been marked by very long visits to Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital.

This reality has helped me get a new, different insight into the realities that exist there. During this time of the year, many address the question of loneliness. Many try hard to touch our conscience and make us donate for some good reason or other.

These appeals address cases where money is needed for some specialised treatment or somebody requiring to travel to a hospital overseas.

There is no doubt many would not be able to receive the required treatment if government-to-government agreements were not in place and without financial support thanks to the many collections that take place on a regular basis, the biggest being L-Istrina, on Boxing Day,

Of course, all this is welcome.

However, there are daily realities that are very hard to address, no matter how much money is collected. There are patients who cannot be sent back to their homes for a variety of reasons. There are patients who do not have any relatives. There are patients whose relatives have simply abandoned them.

It is perhaps more painful to be lonely while surrounded by other patients and staff

These are realities that are not easily noticeable by occasional visitors.

They are, however, well known to the staff who try their very best (generally speaking) to support all patients and they are noticed by those who visit regularly and spend long periods of time in wards.

Long hours in hospital wards imply getting to know patients in the same ward.

It also implies meeting many patients’ relatives in the corridors, in the lifts, in the parking area and the waiting rooms. All this gives an insight into the way in which we treat our relatives.

Many patients are visited on a daily basis. Unfortunately, there are others who get no visitors at all.

These are the ones who feel lonely more than anybody else. Their loneliness is even worse than that of those who live on their own, in some small apartment, somewhere, or in some very large house that served a purpose when the whole family was living in it but which has become useless for a single, older person, who is barely able to move around.

Such loneliness, even when surrounded by people, is something that brings about different levels of frustration.

During the months I have been living in hospital wards, I realised that patients try to beat their loneliness in different ways. Some simply stay put and sleep, or pretend to sleep. Others keep calling the ward staff on a frequent and regular basis, just to ask for some irrelevant information.

In some cases, this puts useless pressure on the staff who are already strained to perform their many duties.

It may sound ridiculous, but it is perhaps more painful to be lonely while surrounded by other patients and staff. This loneliness is harder to deal when patients see visitors regularly next to other patients while they are left alone for days and weeks. It is not only elderly patients who get no visitors.

Even young patients are sometimes left on their own.

These months have taught me that the younger the patient, the more difficult it is to accept being left alone. It makes loneliness even harsher to live with and more difficult to accept. More has to be done to beat this loneliness. As a start, may I suggest wi-fi be introduced at Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital.

Ċensu Galea is a former Nationalist Cabinet minister.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece

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