The college years: 3rd and 4th years 1993-1995

Each college year involved some sort of drama......I must be a magnet for it.



Our 3rd year started off well. Jenny, Kirsty, Becca and myself found a house to rent together. Becca was going off on an American exchange for the 1st term and so her room was let out to Neal. The term started well enough and at the end we had all visited our teaching practice schools ready for the spring term.



We girls planned to go to the Christmas ball and got home from our school visits to get ready. Waiting for us were official looking letters. We were being evicted. Apparently our landlord had been charging us a fortune in rent, but had not been paying the mortgage. Frantic phone calls to our parents followed. Within the next few days the mortgage company had agreed that we could stay on until the end of our tp and then the house would be repossessed. We then did something that I now now is against the law, ooops ;o). We opened the landlord's post (he used to come and pick it up once a month). We discovered he had several different credit cards maxed up to the limit and he wasn't paying them, they were threatening legal action....he obviously wasn't good with money.



The Christmas ball was a little flat after the news, but we did have plenty to drink funnily enough.



After a fantastic TP, I went back to live with Julia and Robin, my surrogate parents. I met Matthew (see previous blog entry) and actually enjoyed the rest of my 3rd year.



My 4th year started in the east end of London. I was due to start my final year at Star School in Tower Hamlets, but first I had a 3 week community placement in a school for children with a range of disabilities. The 1st few days were great, apart from the fact that I felt rough. I am sure I was coming down with cystitis, so got some med from the pharmacy. One night I was in an awful lot of pain and then started bleeding, I collapsed. Someone called an ambulance and I was taken to Newham General hospital. I remember the ambulance men being less than sympathetic and telling me I was probably experiencing a miscarriage. My parents were called and I remember stressing that I wasn't miscarrying as Matthew and I had been very careful....how to tell your parents that you are in a sexual relationship . What's worse is my parents had been told that it was likely that there was a problem with my kidney, so had no idea what I was going on about. I really don't remember the next couple of weeks, but I have been told the following: I was transferred to Whitechapel hospital at Bow, where a scan showed that my left kidney was blocked and in danger of bursting. A tube was inserted into my kidney and attached to a bag to drain said kidney. I contracted blood poisoning and at 1 point my parents were told that I had been lucky to make it through the night. Matthew was constantly by my side apparently.



During this time my parents were running themselves ragged. My Nan (Mum's mum) was living at my parents' having broken her hip, my Grandad (Mum's Dad) was in the local hospital dying from cancer and my aunt (Dad's sister) had just been re-diagnosed with breast cancer. The fact that they coped with all this just goes to show how amazing they are.



While I was in hospital, my Grandad died. I remember being told by Mum and Matthew. I was close to Grandad and his death was devastating. I was allowed out of hospital for his funeral and hid my bag in an old handbag.

I was then transferred to St Andrew's, a hospital so dirty and badly run that it has since been demolished! I was on a mixed ward, where there was no such thing as dignity...if I felt that at 21, what must the elderly gentlemen in the beds beside me felt? The first op to sort out my kidney failed, a few weeks later I went back for an op to remove part of my uretha where the blockage was. This would be my 3rd general anesthetic in 3 months. I finally went home on Christmas Eve.

Against advice, I went back to college in January, the thought of having to repeat a whole year rather than just my TP spurred me on. I attended every lecture, seminar and tutorial and completed the year despite a particular tutor telling me that he doubted I would finish the year....I really am stubborn!

My college year finished with my repeated TP. This time I was in Upton Cross, just down the road from West Ham's ground. I loved the time in the school. My class consisted of 1 Afro-Carribean girl and 29 Indian children. The Indian children came from Islamic, Hindu and Sikh families, this was a real eye opener, the racial tensions between these 10 and 11 year olds was incredible.

At the end of my TP I was offered a job in the borough of Plaistow but I turned it down as I wanted to be down south with Matthew. I got my job at Holy Family on Millbrook on 4th December 1995 and started in the January.