Wednesday 16 March 2011

OFFER!

I'm still in shock I think, but yesterday I got an offer from BSMS to study Medicine in September 2012! Yesterday I went round to Maddy's before Butterflies and checked my emails....I was surprised to find I had one from UCAS saying 'something has changed on track'! Then came a tense few minutes while I loaded UCAS track to see if it was an offer or a rejection.



And there it was! I need to get either AAA or A*AB (although biology and chemistry both have to be As, annoyingly, or I could get A* in psychology and B in chemistry...). It's not really sunk in yet and I'm still not totally sure about Medicine being the right path, so I'm going to pray about it and see what happens but YAY! :D

Aside from the good news, this week's been very hard so far...tomorrow I have the doctor's and I'm so scared but will explain another time. <3

Wednesday 9 March 2011

Compassion

In the early hours of Tuesday morning (8th March), I woke up with the most horrendous headache I could imagine having...I could barely even move! I went and got some ibuprofen (which made no difference) and got back into bed in agony, trying not to cry too loudly and wake up my parents. Then I decided enough was enough and went in to dad, who tried to calm me down but soon realised this wasn't just an average bad headache. So we rang NHS direct and, to cut a long story short, after trying to talk to the lady and not even being able to get the right words out, ended up being driven to A&E and throwing up with pain in the paediatrics cubicle (thankfully I got cocodamol quite quickly after) while I waited to be seen by a doctor.

They thought I had viral meningitis, so after taking some blood for testing, wheeled me on up to the paeds ward where I ended up for the rest of the morning, waiting to be seen by the consultant. I confused everyone with my symptoms - when it became clear I didn't have meningitis (my bloods came back clear) they thought it might be a migraine or severe tension headache, but it didn't fit the pattern for those either!



The consultant came with his mob of less senior doctors and prodded and poked, while I sat there feeling very shy and watched. He decided I was okay, and that we might never know what had happened unless it reoccured... So I got discharged at about half past 12.

While all this had been going on, my half-drugged up blackberry messenger updates to Maddy and Rach had managed to expand, leading to the building of group prayer messages and my being put on the church prayer chain. Wow, I've never experienced anything like it! I got so many lovely texts of support and had amazing friends praying for me and wanting to give up their days to come to visit me in hospital. College friends were equally amazing, planning to come all the way from Congleton crammed in a little Ford Ka to visit if I had still been in hospital!

(just one of lots of sweet texts I got yesterday! :) )



The safety net had descended, and I think that the realisation of how amazing the people around us are was such a beautiful thing to come out what could have been a grim situation. I went home and slept, then Maddy arrived straight from the college bus, bringing a huge care package from her, Jenna and Shannon. Soon Rach joined, bearing gifts of grapes, chocolate, a magazine and a book (aptly) titled 'The Art of Compassion'. Next was Lexie, bring more presents including olives :D and my beautiful Hayley. I wish I'd taken a picture of my girlies all sitting on my bed, showing me how much they loved, but I was too out of it still for picture-taking :D. After they left (lots of big hugs), Wayne arrived and brought some worship CDs for me to listen to while I was out of action. We chatted about worship, impact and the way God pushes us out of our comfort zones (and I had to rescue him from a spider!).


I really cannot believe how blessed I am to have such amazing friends. It sounds cheesy but I'm so, so proud to be part of a 'church' who supports each other in this way - it seems like that's the way church should be, and the younger members who forced me to stay in bed and gathered around just being themselves displayed it so beautifully and so naturally. It was pretty glorious to behold.
Romans 8:28 shines through again - out of this horrible situation has come a reiteration of how loving, generous, kind and thoughtful the people around me are :). It made me think of this verse:

John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Yesterday (and today!), that's what my friends did for me - they texted; they prayed; they visited and rallied around me; some of them (*cough* Mads :D) were filled with protective anger when the consultant discharged me a bit early - basically they supported and held me up for 48 hours. And I know that they all had other things to do - work, college work, planning, eating pancakes!, that they put aside - they acted like Jesus would have in the situation. I'm filled with gratitude, so thankful for the blessings of the people around me and the way in which God truly makes all things work together for our good.

Tomorrow is results day and I've given up weighing myself for Lent (and forgot to weigh myself the night before it started (last night) because of everything that was going on) so I would usually struggling right now but I'm not at all. Surrounded by evidence of my amazing friends' love, reading a book about music changing the lives of those in the depths of poverty and with the anthem from one of Wayne's cds "Ohh how He loves us" dancing around me, things like results and control issues with weight get put into perspective.

Blessed, blessed, blessed! Thank you, God! <3