Living the dream

Twenty-two years ago, as a three-year-old, my daughter Kay used to dress up in a nurse's uniform. She'd order her grandfather to lie down on the sofa and pretend he had been in a monumental traffic accident. He had a broken leg and, worse than that, shards of glass sticking out of it too. She would grab her doctor's bag marked with a red cross, get out her plastic stethoscope, tweezers and syringe and get to work on him. He would be bandaged from head to foot and then sent home. She would then call for her next patient - her long-suffering grandfather once more - to re-enact another scenario. She never tired of it and surprisingly nor did her poor obliging grandfather.

Twenty-two years on, Kay is now into her second year as a junior doctor. She has just started her first 4-month placement in a large London teaching hospital......... in A&E.  Twenty-two years later she's doing it for real. Living the dream.