Dear Peter

Dear Peter,

It’s been approximately eighteen years, 7 months and 3 weeks since I was born and a little less than that since you saved my life. I’ve heard the story often and each time I look at my tummy I can see the scars to prove it: had it not been for you and presumably a team of other wonderful surgeons, doctors and nurses, I doubt I would be here today. I could have written this any number of times but, having just finished school and no longer having any idea of what my life will bring, I saw this as a wonderful time for reflection.

I’ve always grown up as someone who likes to know what is happening and goes berserk when plans are changed. You can imagine then how the prospect of a whole entire world open to me and my decisions is incredibly daunting. I may go to university in London and join my brother or I may find something to do in the next year that I love and want to continue with more than anything. I’ve never really been an education girl: I do well, but sitting in a classroom being recited facts and figures about volcanoes is not really my thing. I want to be active, not a passive listener but someone who talks to people not at them. I want be out in the world rather than shut up in an office, closed in by the weight of documents and deadlines that makes up the corporate world. The fact that I have any of these decisions to make now must have seemed an impossible concept to my parents 17 years ago as they watched me being wheeled away from them down a hospital corridor.

I’ve been lucky and have not had to return to those corridors too frequently but when I think of the JR I am taken back to my early childhood and the times before any concerns about my future had even entered my mind. I can picture the annual visits to see you: the way you’d tell me you could see the teletubbies in my eyes, the waiting room with the little play pen, even the water cooler standing to the left of the rows of chairs and sometimes I can conjure up the other children that I saw come and go through the waiting room. I don’t remember when the teletubbies stopped or when you were no longer my doctor or visiting me at my appointments but it has been a  while now. Although I don’t go to the JR all that often anymore, when I do I always hope to bump into you. If nothing else I want to thank you for the life you let me live. So far it’s been amazing and with my whole life ahead of me, who knows what else there is to come.

Best Wishes,