Well, there hasn't been much training this week - it was rather rudely interrupted by an encounter with very dodgy chlorine on Tuesday night which put me out of commission with a chest infection of sorts.
How am I going to link that to a cause? Well, that's easy.
See, here in the UK, if I actually got round to it I could go to my GP / the out of hours GP / A&E and get some medicine if I really felt I needed it. Or, being a doctor myself (ha!) I could self-diagnose. Or, since I was stupid enough to go into work despite barely being able to breathe, I could get the opinion of about 6 different doctors ("go home with antibiotics and/or an inhaler") - and that's just the ones on my team. Whatever complaints anyone may have to make about waiting times - we're well off here: we have free healthcare at the point of need, we have modern technology that doctors / nurses / patients in many countries can't even dream of (anyone ever heard me rant about Burma?) - and it's all pretty easy to access.
That said, I'm not even going to highlight overseas needs with this post. Why should I when Medecins du Monde, a charity more usually associated with healthcare in war zones and humanitarian disasters, has discovered a worrying - and unmet - need for healthcare among various groups right here on my doorstep in London? Project London provides acute health care to vulnerable groups such as migrants (illegal or in limbo in the asylum system), rough sleepers and sex workers before helping them to register with a GP and access mainstream services. In the two years since it opened, nearly 1,000 patients have been seen, many of whom had been in the UK for at least 3 years before trying to see a doctor. Antenatal services were a common need, as was help with anxiety, back pain, dental problems - all the things that crop up commonly at a GP or dental surgery and which should be easily available to anyone in the UK.
If you want to learn more about their work, in the UK or elsewhere, Medecins du Monde are at http://www.medecinsdumonde.org.uk/
Sunday, 23 November 2008
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Aiming low... (sea level, to be precise)
I have a cunning plan: next year, some time between 28th July and 6th August (weather permitting) I'm going to swim the Channel. It'll be tough, physically & mentally, and in a strange masochistic way I'm looking forward to it and enjoying the training.
I've been asked if I'm going to raise money for charity: no, I'm not. I'm doing this for me, me, me & me, and I'd just feel wrong saying I was doing it for charity. In any case, I don't much like asking people for money - however good the cause - and just imagine the embarrassment if I got all that way and only raised £23 (or I raised £23,000 but didn't complete the swim). Doesn't bear thinking about!! So I'm having a nice, selfish time making sure I do as much training as I can whenever work lets me out early enough and popping along to the Serpentine of a Saturday for a quick swim and breakfast with the swimming club there.
All well and good - but if you know me well you know that I'm a bit into working with the poor, the downtrodden, the given-up-on.... and so that's where this blog comes in. I'm still not going to raise money - but I want to try to use the blog to raise awareness of different groups of people and some of the organisations working with them. The idea is to talk a bit about my training / experience, and then try to link that (however dubiously) to whichever group I'm talking about. If you have an organisation you'd like me to briefly profile, let me know a bit about them and I'll do my best (no promises). If you like what you see, tell your friends - I'd like for my swim to have some positive effect on someone!
Before I go, here's the basic linking idea: I'm going to swim from England to France because I can. The sea is there, the accompanying boat and pilot are booked, the passport is in order, I have the money.... I can just go. There are people who don't have that choice - they can't just go to another country on a whim, maybe because they can't afford to, maybe because they're prisoners of conscience in their own country; there are people who've managed to leave their home country but are now living in poverty here or on borders closer to home; the list goes on. Those are the things I'm going to try to profile. I'm not raising money for any of the groups - it's all about awareness - but I'll try to include information about how to give as and when I can if it helps.
Thanks for reading - please come back
I've been asked if I'm going to raise money for charity: no, I'm not. I'm doing this for me, me, me & me, and I'd just feel wrong saying I was doing it for charity. In any case, I don't much like asking people for money - however good the cause - and just imagine the embarrassment if I got all that way and only raised £23 (or I raised £23,000 but didn't complete the swim). Doesn't bear thinking about!! So I'm having a nice, selfish time making sure I do as much training as I can whenever work lets me out early enough and popping along to the Serpentine of a Saturday for a quick swim and breakfast with the swimming club there.
All well and good - but if you know me well you know that I'm a bit into working with the poor, the downtrodden, the given-up-on.... and so that's where this blog comes in. I'm still not going to raise money - but I want to try to use the blog to raise awareness of different groups of people and some of the organisations working with them. The idea is to talk a bit about my training / experience, and then try to link that (however dubiously) to whichever group I'm talking about. If you have an organisation you'd like me to briefly profile, let me know a bit about them and I'll do my best (no promises). If you like what you see, tell your friends - I'd like for my swim to have some positive effect on someone!
Before I go, here's the basic linking idea: I'm going to swim from England to France because I can. The sea is there, the accompanying boat and pilot are booked, the passport is in order, I have the money.... I can just go. There are people who don't have that choice - they can't just go to another country on a whim, maybe because they can't afford to, maybe because they're prisoners of conscience in their own country; there are people who've managed to leave their home country but are now living in poverty here or on borders closer to home; the list goes on. Those are the things I'm going to try to profile. I'm not raising money for any of the groups - it's all about awareness - but I'll try to include information about how to give as and when I can if it helps.
Thanks for reading - please come back
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)