24 Hours in A&E

Going the Distance (6x3)

Air date: May 21, 2014

Patients and staff at King's reflect on getting older and coming to terms with mortality. Brian, who's 74, is brought into King's by ambulance after falling backwards down a flight of stairs and being knocked unconscious. Brian has severe dementia and lives in sheltered accommodation, but he was staying at his partner Margaret's house at the time of the accident. Margaret speaks about the challenges of Brian's illness as well as their life together. 'The one thing he does keep saying is that he loves me. I think when that goes, that will really seem like the end,' she says. Meanwhile, Sylvester has brought his two-year-old son, Sylvester Junior, in to paediatric A&E after the toddler hit his head on a chair at church and cut his forehead. Sylvester speaks about the joys of fatherhood and how Junior can't keep still. And 70-year-old Leonard, a builder from South London, comes to King's with his partner Susanne. He's lost sensation down his left side and the medics are worried that he may have had a stroke, particularly as he has suffered a previous mini stroke. As the medics treat Leonard, he and Susanne describe how they met - when she was an 18-year-old croupier and he was a cab driver two decades her senior driving her home after a shift - as well as having six kids and what keeps Leonard feeling and acting younger than his age.