Rowden House

Last Friday, I went to Rowden House after about 6 months of first going there. It’s amazing to see how much more relaxed, comfortable and talkative the elderly people have become, which I assume is because they feel safer around me. As it’s December, I’ve been playing Christmas carols, and it’s very interesting to see how most of the elderly people remember the words to the carols but can’t remember whether they were there last Christmas, showing how short-term memory decreases when you get older. There is one woman there who says “You have a wonderful future” to me every week.

Collection for CHSW

Last Saturday, I did a collection for CHSW outside our local farm shop. It was supposed to be their busiest day of the year, but as everywhere was covered with snow, not that many people came. It was cold standing outside for 5 hours but worth it as we raised just over £124.

Collection for CHSW

Last Friday, I did a collection for CHSW at our school’s New Parent’s Parent Evening. It involved over two hours of standing behind a table, whilst trying to get teachers and parents to buy something or donate. I was selling Christmas cards, wrapping paper and other CHSW merchandise. I ended up collecting over £100 through sales and donations, which I was very happy with and I’m sure CHSW will be too.

Rowden House

Today, I went to Rowden House (the local residential home) for the tenth time. I go about every fortnight and started going mid-June and has been surprisingly fun! I started going to see how to deal with older people, and I have learnt quite a lot in a relatively short space of time. For example, talking slowly and clearly helps, and not getting annoyed when repeating yourself for the poor people with dementia or other memory-loss. I go in there and play the saxophone for about 15-20 minutes then sit down and have a nice conversation with them. There are some very kind and funny old ladies and one amusing man (I’ve only ever met one man there). After a while, it became much easier to talk to them and to know what to talk about. We often end up talking about their past or my school, or some other things I’ve done, like hockey matches. Today, I was very worried as when I got there, there was an ambulance, but apparently they have one almost every day because of people falling or things like that. I still go about every fortnight, so I’ll see them again the Sunday after next probably.

Charity collection

Previously, I have done some charity work for CHSW (Children’s Hospice South West). I started raising money for them when they were trying to build their second hospice in Wraxall, Bristol. From Year 6 – Year 9, I had raised over 3 ½ thousand pounds for them. This has come from a sponsored swim, a sponsored walk, a school and a Christmas fayre and some collections outside supermarkets. I also introduced the charity to my school, who then had a 24-hour squashathon which raised over 10 thousand pounds. This would be where children from my area would go if they had life-limiting illnesses. Today, my mum and I did a collection outside White Row farm shop to try and raise more for them. We stood outside the shop for about six hours, then signed out and went home. When we counted the money later, we found out that we had collected over 2 hundred pounds for CHSW!

Med-Link Conference

Today, I went to London to go to a Med-Link conference. If you are looking to have a career in medicine, I would really recommend going. It taught me a lot about what GCSE and A-Level/IB options to choose, and the practical made me even surer that I want to be a doctor. In pairs, we were listening to each other’s heart beats using stethoscopes and making sure they sound ok (which mine did). We were also given some symptoms of a patient and we had to diagnose what they had, and my partner and I successfully figured it out for our group.

Intro

The road to medicine is often a long and difficult journey. So many applicants for so few places. These are the kinds of things I’m doing to help me get into Med-School and also to make sure I know that I want to be a doctor.