A new challenge?

So… you’re working towards your advanced qualification – or you might already be a full member of LAM… but what comes next?  You’ll undoubtedly be proud of your achievement; you’ll certainly be a better – and hopefully safer – rider and probably really enjoy your new-found skills.  But I’d like to offer you another challenge…

One of the reasons I joined LAM was to gain my ad-qual so that I could volunteer with SERV S&L – the blood bike charity that supports the NHS by delivering blood products between hospitals – usually overnight.  I’ve been doing this now for about six years and it’s a very rewarding experience.  We are called SERV-Surrey and London.  We cover a wide area, often travelling up to and through central London, and also further afield into Surrey.  There’s a certain fascination about riding through the streets of the capital – often in the early hours of the morning when most people are warmly tucked up in bed!

Why do we do it?  Well, one of the big rewards for me is the reception we get from the staff in the pathology and haematology departments that we deliver to. They are so grateful for what we do.  One recently said to me that she didn’t need the supplies until early the next day but if she had had to wait for NHS transport, she wouldn’t have got them until the evening.  Another example I will never forget…. I delivered a box of blood to St Thomas’s Hospital for a premature baby that needed a transfusion. Again, the person who received it was so grateful… she said… “I can’t say definitely that you’ve saved a life tonight…but I think you have…”  I walked out of there with tears in my eyes!

If you’d like to know more, go to our website: www.servsl.org.uk and click on the drop-down heading “Volunteer”.  Or maybe you know someone who’s already involved.  I’m sure they would be only too willing to tell you more.

Colin Dawson