High school is a challenging time for most students, but during my time at St Aidan’s, I always felt supported and nurtured. I began my time at St Aidan’s in 1990. My sister Nikki was in year twelve, and I had been impatiently waiting to wear the famous winter beret I had seen her sporting. Sadly, the beret was being phased out by the time I started, but I still took pride in my broad brimmed school hat (not so much in the potato sack like sports uniform).

I spent a great deal of time in hospital, and my teacher at the Royal Children’s Hospital school would call St Aidan’s the moment I walked through the door, and they would fax through fifty odd pages of work for me to do. Reading, and indeed study, helped me to escape the minutiae of daily hospital life, and this became even more important during my final two years. Even though I was a child, I was dealing with adult concepts, like dying, death and my own illness, so my high school experience was very different to most of the other girls. My core group of friends are still some of my closest today. 

I will never forget our final speech night. I had an oxygen tank in my parent’s car because I was quite unwell at this point. In an unexpected turn of events, the headmistress of the time, Mrs Evans spoke about me very tenderly in her end of year speech, and all the teachers on stage gave me a standing ovation. The rest of the school followed suit, and it was a moment that both stunned and overwhelmed me. I had no idea that this was going to happen, and I found myself in a torrent of tears which is something I will never forget. 

In 1998, I received a double lung transplant with less than a week to live, and my memoir Breath explores much of this life altering event (there may even be a few cheeky high school stories in there, too) and its aftermath. I can’t say that high school was easy, but anything worth doing rarely is. I will always remember my years at St Aidan’s with great fondness.