CONGRATULATIONS, you have just won the lottery. We often hear in the media that term postcode lottery for health care. This term means that depending on where you live you will have differential levels of health care available to you.

Well, congratulations. You have just won the lottery because by living in Oxfordshire you have at your fingertips some of the best hospitals and healthcare facilities in the United Kingdom.

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest acute teaching trusts in the UK, with a national and international reputation for the excellence of its services and its role in teaching and research.

The trust consists of four hospitals: the Churchill Hospital, John Radcliffe Hospital and Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford and the Horton General Hospital in Banbury. In addition to these major hospitals there are nine smaller community hospitals in smaller towns around the county, including Witney, Henley, Abingdon and Bicester.

From a personal perspective, I have very good experience of time in hospital and the top quality care you can receive in our county. After suffering a haemorrhagic stroke six years ago I was admitted to the stroke ward of the John Radcliffe Hospital where I was given a 50 per cent chance of survival at first.

I spent one month there before being transferred to the Oxford Centre for Enablement (OCE) which is part of the Nuffield orthopaedic hospital in Headington where I spent a further four months on the Neurological Rehabilitation ward The OCE is a superb facility for the treatment of people with acquired brain injury and I shared my ward with many people that had suffered car accidents and brain injuries of one sort or another, as well as those with multiple sclerosis and other neurological conditions.

I genuinely feel very blessed in our county to have these facilities at hand and I know that my own gradual recovery would not have been possible without these excellent facilities and the great staff that work within them.

I regularly go back to OCE for further treatment and having spent such a long time there, I consider it a bit like a second home.

I also thought the food was brilliant at both hospitals I stayed in and it really annoys me when I hear people moaning about hospital food. I thought the food was very good and to be honest, I was just glad to be alive to be eating it.

When people stay in hospital they must remember that it’s not a hotel and it’s not a restaurant. It’s a free service from the NHS and is not Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons or any other posh restaurant.

I was shocked to see TV chef James Martin on the television showing examples of how poorly the food looked on the plate at certain hospitals. In any case, I think that the nutritional content is much more important.