What to Write in a Get Well Card
The card came round at half nine and you do not know how ill they are
Nobody does. Somebody said “op”. Somebody else said “in for a few days”. And now you are trying to write a sentence with no idea whether this is a knee or something considerably worse.
That is the whole difficulty with get well cards, and everything below is arranged around it. Three questions first, then a hundred-odd lines sorted by what actually happened.
Three questions before you write anything
1. Broken bit, or bad news?
A knee, a shoulder, a gallbladder out on a Tuesday: be as rude as you like. They are bored, they are stuck on a sofa, and they want the entertainment.
Anything with the word “results” in it is a completely different card, and you want the last two sections of this page rather than the first eight.
2. Are they still in, or are they home?
Still in, keep it short. They are being woken every four hours to be asked how they slept and they cannot concentrate on a paragraph.
Home, and you can be normal at them again, which is the actual gift. Four days of people using the concerned voice makes you want to scream.
3. Are they going to get well?
The hard one, and the reason this page has a section most do not.
Some things do not get better, they get managed. “Get well soon” written to somebody with a long-term condition is a small, well-meaning kick, because it quietly asks them to hurry up and be better, and they cannot. If you are not sure, skip to the bottom of this page first.
Being funny is usually the right answer
For anything routine it is not merely allowed, it is correct. Being ill is mostly boring. They have had four days of sympathy voices and the card that made them laugh is the one that stays on the windowsill.
Take the mickey at the situation: the ward food, the hospital car park, the fact that they have now told the story eleven times and it gets longer each go.
And on the serious version, the failure mode is not being too dark. It is being absent. People go quiet when something is bad, because they are frightened of saying the wrong thing, and the person in the bed reads that silence as everyone else getting on with their lives. A clumsy message beats no message by a distance nobody appreciates until they have been the one waiting for it.
What to write in a welcome home from hospital card
The discharge card is its own occasion and almost nobody makes one, which is why the shelves send you back to get-well. The joke here is not the illness. It is the ward, the food, the car park, and the sheer relief of being back on your own sofa.
- Four nights on a ward. You’ll never complain about our sofa again.
- Welcome back. The cat noticed. Briefly.
- Through the worst of it and into the boring bit.
- The hospital car park cost me twenty-two quid. You owe me.
- No more being woken at six to be asked how you slept.
- Home is better than in. Ask any nurse.
- You’re out. That’s the headline. The rest is small print.
After an operation
The dread was the worst part and it is now behind them, which is the thing worth saying.
- Whatever they took out, you weren’t using it.
- The surgeon does one job and does it well. Rare, these days.
- You went under swearing and came round swearing. Consistent.
- New hip, same moaning.
- It’s done. The dreading was the worst part.
- Six weeks of physio. Do the physio. Actually do it.
Broken bones, plaster, crutches
The safest ground on this whole page. Nothing has been taken away, they are simply inconvenienced and slightly ridiculous, and they know it.
- Which daft activity was it this time? Don’t answer.
- I’ll sign the cast when I’ve thought of something worse.
- Crutches: a two-week novelty and a four-week nightmare.
- Bad news, you can’t drive. Worse news, I’m driving.
- Whatever you were doing, you’re too old for it.
For someone who is hopeless at resting
Every family has one. Signed off on Monday, up a ladder by Wednesday, genuinely baffled when it takes twice as long to heal.
- The garden will still be there in October.
- Signed off is a medical instruction, not a suggestion.
- If I hear you’ve been up a ladder, I’m telling your wife.
- You resting is now a team effort. Cooperate.
- Doing nothing is the treatment. That’s the prescription.
From the office or the team
The office card has one job: prove the building has noticed. It does not need to be moving. It needs to arrive.
- Twelve of us signed this. Three can spell your name.
- The place is limping along. Fitting, really.
- We’ll still be here in three weeks. Sadly.
- It took four of us to cover your workload. Noted.
- Get well soon-ish. No rush at our end.
For a child
The joke goes on the injury, the hospital food, or their dad. Never on the child, and never on how frightened everybody was.
- Broken arm at eight. Absolute legend.
- Only one in your class with a cast. Milk it.
- Hospital food is the worst bit. Everyone agrees.
- You were braver than your dad would have been.
- Get better soon. The trampoline’s in the shed until you do.
- The whole school is asking. You’re famous for a week.
- One week off school. Don’t get used to it.
When it is actually serious
The rules change completely. No jokes about the illness, none about the treatment, and no silver lining.
What you are offering is that you will still be here in four months, when everybody else has stopped asking. That is the entire message and it does not need dressing up.
- No get well soon from me. That’s not what this is.
- You’ll get plenty of advice. None of it from me.
- I don’t know what to say and I won’t pretend otherwise.
- Whatever the next few months look like, I’m in for all of them.
- Stop doing the plucky voice. Not with me.
- I’ll keep turning up. Be terrible company. Fine by me.
- Tell me the real answer, not the one everyone else gets.
When “get well soon” does not apply
Chronic illness. A long-term diagnosis. Something that gets managed rather than cured.
The stock phrase asks them to hurry up and stop being ill, which they would if they could. Do not use it. What works instead is showing that you understand this is not a thing with an end date, and that you are not going to lose interest once it stops being news.
- Get well soon doesn’t cover this. So: thinking of you, properly.
- Skip the medical update. How are you actually doing?
- A good day is a good day. That can be the whole win.
- You’ve managed this for years and nobody claps.
- I’ve read up on it. Badly. But I’ve read up on it.
- I’ll ask again next month. And the month after.
When you cannot be funny about it
- Get better. Take the time. Take more than the time.
- Thinking of you, and that’s not a formality.
- Anything you need, name it and it’s done.
- Rest properly. See you when you’re up to it.
- Properly relieved. Now take it slowly.
- Get well soon, from all of us, and we mean it.
The cards we print
Ours are mostly for the discharge rather than the ward, because the moment somebody gets home is the one nobody makes a card for.
- You survived. Don’t do that again.
- Glad you’re out. The ward must be delighted.
- Welcome home. Now shut up about it.
- They fixed you. Structurally. That’s all they could manage.
- Look at the state of you. Same as before, to be fair.
- Signed by twenty-three people. Four of whom know you.
Still need the card itself?
We make get well and out of hospital cards for people who are bored of being asked how they are.
Blank inside, so the words above are yours. Printed and posted in the UK.
The cards we print for this
Written for the day they get home rather than the week in the bed. Blank inside, printed and posted in the UK.