I jumped in the car and headed out to the stretch of the Old Federal Highway that's popular with cyclists for its lack of traffic. I was told Matt wanted me to pick up his bike (cyclists will understand that too I struggled somewhat) and then come and meet him at hospital. I was expecting to find his bike leaning against a tree. Instead I found my husband lying on the road.

He did seem okay. Alive and breathing and nothing obviously broken. I couldn't see any bones at least. But he was bleeding. His legs and arms and buttocks had taken the brunt of the fall. There was a pool of blood forming under one hip. All I could think at the time was how it looked the same as the blood you see under roadkill. Not a nice thought.

But this story isn't about my husband's bleeding buttocks but how a day spent in the midst of the health care system reminds you that perhaps everything is not as bad as we sometimes think it is.

There are never any good news stories about the health care system in the media. No one ever hears about babies who are pulled back from the brink of likely death, given the finest care, nursed, along with their parents, to a point where they can all go home. No one ever hears about the elderly who are treated with the utmost dignity in their final hours. Or kids who break an arm falling off the monkey bars and are kept happy and sent home with an ice-block.

For more, pick up a copy of today's Canberra Times