Blog 1 - 12/11/2014

Most people start a blog at the beginning of their gap year, or after something big has happened. However, I’ve decided to be a little unconventional. I am now a few months into my gap year, which will end in September 2015 when I take up my unconditional place to read Medicine.

I’ve never had any interest in taking a gap year to travel to developing countries and help underprivileged people there. It’s not that I don’t want to help people; of course I do. It’s just that that kind of experience seems hugely cliched and I wonder how much the token effort gap year students put in for what is, let’s face it, a very short period of time, really makes a difference to people’s lives. And all that aside, it’s just not worth the risk with the current Ebola crisis. There is a fine line between selflessness and sheer stupidity, and I feel that putting myself at risk would cross this line somewhat.

Anyway, I had actually never had any interest in taking any kind of gap year. I’ve been desperate to get stuck into a degree in Medicine since I was about 11, so waiting until I was eighteen was long enough. Having managed to get two conditional offers for Medicine in Upper Sixth and one for Biomedical Sciences (maybe I am gloating a little!), I was sure I would get to go to University immediately, thus avoiding having to brave the scary real world for at least another five years. However, due to what was really quite a monumental screw-up on the part of both the exam boards and my university, I was forced (and paid) to defer my place for Medicine to 2015.

So although I had transcended the torture that is A-levels in August, I was left in limbo between sixth form and medical school with no plan, no ideas, and very little money. I had a think about what I might like to do: more A-levels? No thanks! A job in retail? I’d already done that for eighteen months alongside A-levels and, after brief consideration, I decided I’d rather spend the year bashing my head repeatedly against a brick wall. And then, after a few days, I remembered a local care agency. My grandmother died in the middle of 2012, riddled with cancer among a long list of other pretty grim medical conditions. Towards the end, she lost all of her hair and became very sore (and very demanding). My granddad couldn’t cope with looking after her all the time, so the GP suggested a care agency which would send in a carer for a couple of hours per week to provide some respite. The carers would gently rub cream into my grandmother’s newly bald head and chat to her, whilst my granddad went out for a couple of hours. None of the jobs they did were essential, but they totally changed both my grandparents’ lives. They were truly fantastic. Which got me thinking - I’ve got all the time in the world and no responsibilities. I could do this for a year and know that I’m actually making a difference. I’ll get to help them, and they’ll help me by giving me the kind of hands on experience I would never get in any other setting. So I applied, and got the job. And a few months on, I am a fully trained, (almost) fully fledged care and support worker.

It’s the best and the worst job in the world. It’s incredibly rewarding, but it’s like being on a rollercoaster that goes backwards. There are breathtaking highs and devastating lows, and you never know when each is coming.

I have yet to see anyone die but I’m surrounded by death. Almost everyone I see has either lost someone they thought they couldn’t live without, or is creeping towards death themselves. It’s heartbreaking because I make hundreds of cups of tea, hold hundreds of hands and spend hundreds of hours consoling the devastated (35 per week to be precise, give or take), and everyone’s situation is different; yet I am faced with exactly the same emptiness and frustration that nothing I do will ever make it completely better every single time. That never changes.

I work with the dying, and by definition, that is exactly what they are doing. But it doesn’t make it any easier to get the phone call letting you know that the lady you were chatting with about lipstick shades last night is critically ill in hospital, or to see a child turn blue choking on her own saliva in her bed.

But just when you think it’s never going to get better, it does. You find that someone who the doctors had already written off is not only out of bed this morning, but can talk to you about what a beautiful day it is outside. Or you walk into the house of somebody who has thirty plus carers visiting him, and his face lights up and he says your name as soon as he sees you. And just the other day, an elderly man had spent twenty minutes wrestling with an ice cream tub lid, just so that he could make a bowl of ice cream for me when I arrived; he thinks I work too hard and wants to look after me. These moments are precious, and I treasure them.