by Rachael Taylor

Created on: May 19, 2008

After several years of debating within my own mind whether or not the job of a healthcare professional was the right role for me, I decided to take advantage of the two week work placement offered to all students in their final year of high school and arranged to spend it shadowing a remarkable Cardiologist, Dr. Arya at the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary.

Before applying for the placement, I had no specific interest in cardiology itself, but rather the notion of being a doctor. From a young age, I had always felt attracted to the idea of having a fabulous, well respected career when I grew up. Though at the time, upon being asked the question What would you like to be when you grow up, Rachael?' my answer would have been the obvious: An Oscar winner, of course!'

But as I matured and began to take a more serious approach to my career, I began to realise that the apparent fabulous' jobs were not only unrealistic, but unreliable and simply out of reach. My dazzling dreams of becoming the next Cameron Diaz quickly began to lose colour.

Nonetheless, around the same period of time, something quite extraordinary happened to me. I was diagnosed with a serious illness titled Hyperthyroidism' and gradually, I turned into a drastically thin, nervous and overemotional insomniac. I was taking twelve tablets a day, and visiting the hospital at least once a week.

After a year, I was finally placed under the knife, and the origin of my ill health was extracted. Thankfully, it didn't take long before I returned to my former healthy state. It was no less than a week until my mother cried "Oh, she's back!"

It was as if I'd taken a year long holiday, and whilst I'd been gone, I'd been replaced with a far more irritable person. The experience was pretty surreal and in my mind, an indistinct blotch on the map of my life. But as bizarre as it may seem, it was perhaps the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

The experience transformed me into a much stronger and intelligent person, with firm morals, added compassion and a positive outlook on almost everything. Even stranger, I had also started to enjoy spending time in hospital. Obviously, it wasn't the sick patients that struck me, but the staff that dashed around the place. They were all so encouraging, optimistic and hard-working. To me, the doctors and nurses seemed like holy beings.

And it was then that I realised that a career in medicine was something worth considering. I wasn't sure if I had the ability academically, but psychologically

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