To all the wondrous, powerful, inspiring and loving women in my life, It’s because of you all that I am here now, being who I am, being what I want to be, with all the happiness, strength and pride you taught me to have, as we all continue discovering ourselves. On International Women’s Day 2019,…

Nowadays, it is so easy to fall into a mousetrap that is governed so much by what everyone else around you is doing, and what they expect of you.  Politics, finances, staff shortages, body image, social media – the combination of pressures has simply become a norm – the modern-day rat-race.  Yet, not everyone is…

Being the interchanging medical student that I am, I am frustratingly back in hospital as the impatient inpatient again.  Another morning ward-round has just been and gone, and I’ve witnessed yet another bunch of thumb-twiddling medical students shuffle silently behind the lead Consultant.  Not once does the doctor break their own dialogue to ensure his…

They’ve always had that saying, “doctors are the worst patients”.  Even I’ve said it many times before, nervously dousing in a feathery laugh as I try to throw in a light-heartedly sarcastic joke, the attending doctor glaring round at me with an expressionless smile.  Truth is, medical students are too. Nurses.  HCAs.  Physiotherapists.  In fact,…

Paper folded over the crease of the clipboard, we file on into the side-room, the smell of thick phlegm and night-breath hovering in the stuffy bay.  A gentleman, middle-aged, thick, strong, dark tufts of hair sticking up greasily behind the steamy mask of the nebuliser.  He is pale, yellow, and famished, his calf muscles withered…

When we first think of the wirings in Medicine, we may think of the critically ill patient, surrounded by dozens of entangled leads that all connect up to machines that continuously programme to maintain that patient’s life.  ECG leads, pulse oximetry, blood pressure cuffs.  Then, when we think of wireless medicine, we adopt a thinking…

This weekend, I felt very privileged to be given the opportunity to finally meet a wonderful and talented family friend of mine, Alyn Waterman.  Alyn is a hair and makeup artist for the film and television industry and has worked for many big names over the years, such as working closely with stars such as…

It’s always nice to start off a New Year well, right?  So the first good thing you can do to start off 2019 is to help start changing the attitudes towards disability, in a quest to make society a better place for everyone. It’s not uncommon knowledge that 2018 was a “big year for disability”,…

There is something very cleansing about reflecting on the past year.  It allows us to learn lessons, be thankful and also to aspire, to be forward-thinkers for the year ahead.  It helps remind us how truly lucky we are to have made it through yet another year, on all sorts of levels.  Having established long…

With the beginning of each new year, the next 12 months are unsurprisingly hard to predict by, in all forms of life’s routine – our health, our successes and our failures, politics, and the decisions of those politics, natural disasters, love and loss.  But what we do know is that yet again, another new year…