food and drink – Page 2 – Sensing Spaces of Healthcare: NHS Sensory Memory Bank

Memory #21

From 2022

I remember… I went to hospital recently. While I was waiting I read my book & had some vending machine chocolate. I felt very comfortable there and the doctors were very kind.

Memory #1

From 2020

I remember… When my baby son was very ill in Spring 2020 I have a keen sensory memory of the mixed smell of bleach and baked potatoes that they brought me every evening (no other vegetarians on the ward!). To begin with this was a smell of worry and stress, but as he recovered it became a smell of hope. I remember finally bringing him home and bringing the smell back with him and feeling our lives restart properly.

Memory #13

I remember… The incessant beeping of monitors. Telephones at the nurses’ desk ringing constantly. The unpleasant smell of breakfast wafting in from the HDU. A lone 1980s copy of ‘Pâtés and Terrines’ in the family room, nothing else to read. The atmosphere mixed with the smell of disinfectant and burnt toast.

Memory #12

I remember… The taste of almost cold jacket potatoes with cheese that wouldn’t melt, strawberry jelly topped with a decorated dollop of mousse. Both foods I couldn’t eat for at least a year after.

Memory #10

From 2008/9

I remember… In around 2008/9, after surgery due to an ectopic pregnancy, I wasn’t allowed to drink and for what feels like days in my memory I had a kind of spongey stick doused in lemony-y liquid which was tantalising – not quenching as I couldn’t have much, but the taste is still something I associate with quenching thirst. In the same stay (I needed to stay a while after the surgery), I remember being on a shared ward and the sounds and smells of fellow patients waking in the night in pain or needing to use a commode – I don’t remember the exact smells, mainly the rustling of curtains in the night and then feeling a bit like I was intruding by being awake.

Memory #6

From 1972

I remember… As a child, I had an operation at a NW Hospital (1972). I remember waking up on the ward and being incredibly thirsty and alone. I reached over to get a drink from my bedside and covered myself in undiluted Ribena. I lay there, still thirsty, sick and sticky. … I was unattended for long periods of time.

Memory #4

From 1967

I remember… In 1967, as a three year old, I was an inpatient at a hospital in London, where I had my tonsils and adenoids removed. On awaking from the operation, I was offered food. The first item proffered was the hardest Rock Cake I have ever experience (then or since). As you can imagine, my throat was not ready for such an assault. The experience remains vivid over 50 years later!