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Gregory Ross Gillett 1954 - 2001 |
 
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A career of healing
Compassion
Caring
Thinking of Others
Childhood
Martial Arts
Oriental Medicine
Family
Transplants
The last illness
Health Definitions
Resume
Music
Vermin
Martial Arts
Tai Chi
Philosophy
Einstein
Was Einstein happy?
Messages
Jaimie Polson
Tony Maclean
Caring
"I would like to highlight this with two examples of this unselfish caring attitude he had - one concerned me and another occurred to a dear friend.
Long before Greg received his transplant, I was receiving treatment for a migraine and I was complaining about the pain. looked across and realised that Greg was bluer than usual and I said too him "Are you OK?"
He said "I have to have a veni-section tomorrow my blood is so thick and my own head is thumping".
(Greg had a condition called Polycythemnia) that was a secondary complication of his health problems. Veni-section was where they took 500mls to a litre of blood from Greg to stop him having a stroke. This was done about every 6 weeks and closer to the transplant every 2 weeks. This complicated his life as this continual blood loss resulted in chronic anaemia, which called for Iron injections which further increased his blood thickness and increased the need for removal of blood. Greg accepted this as part of his condition and never complained.)
I said to him "I am so sorry for carrying on about my headache... you must get so frustrated with people like me with our insignificant problems".
He said: "Shaz your problem is that you never get sick and when you do you want to be better as quickly as possible. My problem is that I don’t know what its like to be well... I just have good days and bad days".
The other incident was only about 12 months ago and occurred to a mutual friend of ours. She was having her neck fixed by Greg as she had been suffering headaches for days. She likewise was complaining about her pain when she realised that Greg had a drip in his arm. (He had only been allowed out of hospital on the provision he give himself an antibiotic drip 3 times a week.
This person said "Are you alright?" and Greg replied "This is nothing, I just have a small infection now lets get you better lets fix this neck and stop these headaches".
Thinking of others