Let us start from the beginning My earliest memories are of being told of how much Jesus loved me. I do not ever remember a time when I did not know about Jesus. I loved Him so much from my very earliest memory. I always knew that I had to talk to Him every day. I knew that my parents would pray with me every night before I went to sleep but I always knew that after they had prayed it was my time to talk to Him. I would always begin my prayers the same way. ”Dear Lord Jesus I love you so much, thank you for loving me so much too, thank you for hearing and answering my prayers”. To this very day I still start my night time prayer with the very same words. Until this moment I do not think I have ever written these words it makes me feel like bursting into floods of tears but that cannot happen as usual I am writing on the plane. I cannot even remember how young I was when this happened, I do not think I could have been much older than two. Jesus was so real to me and he still is. I never had a conversion experience because I always loved Jesus so much and always knew he loved me. I confess I have never once doubted this not even when at Cambridge doing theology surrounded by doubting people it never happened to me. I was brought up in a very Christian house hold but not an Anglican one. My father (Maurice White) was a very staunch Calvinist by background and my mother (Pauline White) was from a classical Pentecostal AOG background. I must confess I rather like seeing peoples shock and horror when I tell them in churches that I have never been converted. I remember as a child being rather concerned that I had never given my heart to Jesus. I remember trying many times as a child trying to cut out the shape of a heart and give it to Jesus. I never could manage to cut out the shape properly. Yet I always knew that I loved Jesus and that he loved me. I was clearly influenced by the Pentecostal conference that I used to always be taken to where there were so many appeals and such a concentration on making a decision to follow Jesus. It was at this early age that I first realised the tension between my Pentecostal and Strict Baptist/Calvinistic heritage. The earliest book I ever remember being read was Bunyan’s Holy War. Very different from what most children ever experience. It was also from my earliest childhood that I can remember being told about what were in essence complex theological concepts. By the age of six I could list the five points of Calvinism, with the acronym TULIP. Total Depravity Unconditional Election Limited Atonement Irresistible Grace Perseverance of the Saints I did not just know all the points of TULIP I could also say what each point meant. There was no question about it I had a very strange upbringing. I remember that ever Sunday morning we would go to the Strict Baptist Sunday School, followed by their morning service. We would rush home for our family Sunday lunch and then head to the large Assemblies of God Church for there afternoon Sunday School we would then have a packed meal that we would take with us and stay on to their evening service. My earliest memories as a child were of an exceptionally happy childhood with my older sister Joanna (2 years older than me) and Mark my brother who was only 11 months younger. From the earliest days I remember having an abundance of toys and nearly all of them were made by my father. I did not grow up in a wealthy household but in one that was really quite poor. My father was Anglo Indian a very strange tribe of British Indians a product of the British Raj. My father had come from a very distinguished influential family but he had chosen to marry my mother who was not seen as being from the right social background being from a more humble working class stock. It was her father who had been one of the earliest graduates of the first Assemblies of God Bible Colleges in the UK. He then went to work for Smith Wigglesworth one of the greatest Pentecostal leaders of all time. Today his great grandson Henry Fardell is a really good friend of mine and my dentist and a truly outstanding dentist but more about that latter. My father was disinherited for marrying my mother and they ended up living a simple life in a poor part of London. My father was an exceptionally bright man. He had degrees in Biological Sciences, Civil Engineering and Theology. He new all the classical languages, and could both write fluently in both Latin and Classical Greek. It was his grasp of mathematics that totally baffled me. I could never grasp what he used to try and teach me. Yes from a young age my life was like living in a university. Other people of my age were living lives of fun but me I was in a life of steep learning. I was not considered as very bright. I was considered the very nice person among my siblings but not the really bright one, Of the many toys my father made there were two in particular that were very important to me. The first was a wooden farmyard that my father had made. It had all the outbuildings, a wonderful surround of wooden trees. To my farm I would take my array of plastic farm animals. I was sure that my animals loved my farm. There was just one thing different about my farm and that was my favourite animal it was a kangaroo. The kangaroo was not just one of may farm animals it was also my favourite soft toy this time not made by my father but knitted by my mother, it even had a baby in its pouch. My other memorable toy came when I was older and lasted me for several years. It was the most amazing wooden go cart I have ever seen. Once again made by my father but this was a go cart extraordinaire. Made mainly from wood it was built like a vintage Rolls Royce, it had a working steering wheel and built in highly effective suspension. All the body of the car was wooden apart from the front which was made of metal and based on the front of a silver ghost Rolls Royce. It was simply amazing. The bonnet of the car lifted up and inside I kept an extensive first aid kit. First aid was a very major interest of mine and from the age of 9 I was a member of the St Johns Ambulance Brigade. Thursday nights were the highlight of the week for me as this was the night that night that we would go and have our first aid lessons and practice. As I look back 40 years ago it amazes me how much we were taught as children. To me being taught was not enough you also had to practice. So I started treating all the children in the neighbourhood who had simple accidents. Within a short while if any child was hurt in the neighbourhood I would go on my go cart to provide them this service. It was not long before the local doctor was even complimenting my first aid service. Another unusual thing of my childhood was the philo Semitic attitude of my father. He did not just teach me about Christianity but also Judaism I learnt that it was the total foundation of our faith. I was also taught about the evils of anti Semitism and even the Holocaust. As a child I lived in an area of London which had traditionally been very Jewish we therefore had the main London Jewish Cemetery. I never saw the cemetery being attacked but I thought it could be therefore I would regularly go and stand at the cemetery to keep guard. It was at this young age that I started reading about Judaism and Medicine. Other children would be reading the Beano Cartoons and I was reading Understanding Judaism by Rabbi Luis Jacobs and An Introduction To Surgery. I would spend hours in the libraries looking for the right books. Take them home and devour them. A very strange childhood indeed. I remember the class being asked at school by our teacher, what we wanted to do when we grew up. I knew without doubt that I wanted to do two things I wanted to work in Anaesthetics and be a priest. I was told quite clearly that I could only do one thing and I could not be a priest because I was a Baptist and they did not have priest. Good job that even at such a young age such words did not deter me. What was to happen next was to be one of the really significant events of my young life. Living in the same road as me was an old lady who was bed ridden. Nobody every saw her but there were stories told about her not least by her sister who lived next door to us. I remember very clearly saying one day to her sister would I be allowed to go and see Miss Davis. I was assured she would love to see me and that same day I was taken to see her. That was the first day of the rest of our life, Miss Davis became to me Aunty Hilda and from that day I would visit her everyday. She was a lady with a profound depth of faith. She so loved Jesus regularly we would pray together. There was one problem though. Aunty Hilda was not a Baptist or a Pentecostal. She was a member of the Church of England, in my circles they were not even considered real Christians. Though she could not leave her home her priest used to come and see her every week and bring her Holy Communion. It was the same priest who used to come to school every week. It was clear to me that Aunty Hilda was indeed a real Christian. She knew and loved God. As did her priest and the two Curates. It was not long before I visited her church that she could not visit. As I entered it I entered a different world, I had never experienced church like this in my life. It was smells and bells high church Anglo Catholic liturgy. As I stood there as a ten year old boy I looked around and immediately felt I love this place. It was not long before I was attending the church not just every Sunday but every day. I would literally run from school to church so I could attend Evensong according to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer every day. On Saturdays I would also attend the daily communion service. On Sunday I would start at the very first service of the day at 7am I would then go with the priest to take the service at the local before rushing to the Strict Baptist Church then later to the Pentecostals. By this stage I had been made a server at the Anglican Church and greatly enjoyed dressing up in a robe. I remember walking the church to the hospital early one Sunday morning with the priest and him saying to me “Andrew don’t you get indigestion with all this church”. I admit it was very strange but I was very strange. The next major thing that happened to me the chronic ear and throat problems I had all my childhood were getting a lot worse and it was decided I had to have a tonsilectomy and myringotomy operation on my ears. I went into hospital and will never forget the first time I went into the operating theatre. I had already read my first book on Anaesthetics and my was I pleased to meet the anaesthetist. It must have been very strange for him having an 11 year old child asking him why he was still using cyclopropane on his anaesthetic machine, did he not think it was to dangerous. I remember him telling me that it was a very good induction agent for children. 10 years later when working in Anaesthetics the question was still being asked is it safe to use Cyclopropane. Today it is no longer used and considered far too dangerous. I had my operation and I will never forget how much I enjoyed the feeling of being anaesthetised. The next thing I remember was vomiting blood. It was not something in passing it continued and continued. The doctors gathered around me they were clearly worried. They decided to set up a blood transfusion and it was not long that at nearly midnight they decided to take me back to the Operating Theatre. It was the same consultant anaesthetist as in the morning. Despite being really unwell I just managed to have a conversation with him. Once again I asked him a very unlikely children’s question. “are you going to use cricoid, pressure I asked”. “Of course I am” he answered. This was an anaesthesia emergency procedure used when there was a risk that the stomach was full of food or blood. I at 11 knew all about this process. The operation happened my recovery was slow but I got there. When I was well enough to go out I was taken out for one of may fathers trips to central London. These trips were regular and contained certain features. Lunch would be taken in my fathers favourite Indian restaurant called Anwars in Gower street off of Tottenham Court Rd. in central London. I loved this place I first went there at the age of 4 and a few weeks ago after 45 years of visiting it regularly it closed very recently, I very sad day. After food I was always taken to Charing Cross road it was here that many of the book shops, the places that my father loved to visit but it had also become a place I loved to visit for here was Foyles which was then the biggest book shop in the world. There downstairs on the lower ground floor was the huge medical department. My gift for going through a hard time of surgery was to buy a book of my choice. It was to the Anaesthetics section that I went and there I found my dream book “The Synopsis of Anaesthesia”. This was indeed my dream book and to this day this same volume sits in pride of place on the bookshelf of my study in England. So before my teens the whole foundation of my life had been set. My love of the Church both Anglican and Pentecostal, my love of Anaesthetics and my profound interest in Judaism and the Middle East. So far my story had been good but it was about to radically changed. My dear sister Joanna was becoming increasingly ill. She went from, doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital. My Parents spent so much taking her to see private doctors on Harley Street. She no longer was able to go to school and eventually it was clear that she was mentally ill. She stopped eating and it became clear that she had developed anorexia nervosa. This was in the day when very little was known about this condition. She spent hours crying and screaming, life was becoming intolerable for her and the whole family. We lived in fear of her intolerable behaviour. She would often be taken into the psychiatric unit for long periods at a time. This was the only time it was tolerable to be at home. When she would come back home our life would return to its intolerable state. I remember walking back from school with my brother Mark and we would be praying together that Joanna would not be in her crazy state. Most of the time she was. I would spend very little time at home and would spend most of my time with Aunty Hilda. Before to long it was realised that Hilda was no longer well enough to live on her own and was taken into a Christian convent hospital over the other side of London. This she loved but my pain and distress without her just grew greater. On our holidays from school my brother and I would increasingly spend our day travelling on buses all around London on a red rover bus ticket. It soon become clear that my parents were wanting to move out of London not least so we could grow up in a better area and attend a better school. I knew the area that they were interested in which was in Kent the garden of England. It was the area where both my parents had lived and met each other. It was the area where my maternal grandparents lived as well and where my mother had grown up. I was now the grand age of 12 so I thought I was old enough to do the house hunting and find a house to move to. This I did I found a house in the right area and my parents decided to buy this house which was far larger and nicer than in what we had previously. We moved started excellent new schools and really appreciated the new area. It was soon after we moved that my grandparents decided to emigrate to South Africa. My mothers sister Denise had married an africans man and was living there. The grandparents had visited her and were sure that South Africa provided a far better place to live so off they went and we missed them so much. My sister remained in her awful state being taken in and out of hospital. Her anorexia was so severe that her weight fell to just 4 stone and she was 5ft 2. She continued to go in and out of hospital and life at home remained intolerable. Church continued to play a major role in my life. With the move we had continued to go to the Strict Baptist Chapel and the AOG Church. The Church of England was not like the high Anglo Catholic Church I had been part of in London. This was my first experience of a middle of the road liberal Catholic Church I did not like it and never joined it. To my surprise I made a young friend for the first time in my life. He was younger than me and called Brian Heath. He was at the same school as me and we often used to do our home work/prep together. The one other thing we used to love to do was to look for frogs in a local stream. We had quite a collection of them so much so that we created a pond for them in my garden at home. All the frogs were named biblically. There was Obadiah, Malichi and from the New Testament Bartholomew. Brian went to a different Church from me it was United Reformed, they had a youth group as well so I went along and kept going to this church until I left home. It was in my first Summer Vacation that I realised I needed to do something else that could really help people. I went to the local volunteer centre and they sent me to the local Pop in Parlour (PIP) which was a place where elderly people would come to sit talk and drink tea. I immediately got whole heartedly involved with the PIP, I was not doing just the normal 2 hour duty of service I was there all day. Not just talking with the many diverse users but cleaning the whole centre from top to bottom. As I got to know the users more they would often tell me the various needs they had at home so I would regularly visit their various homes and help them. My life was rapidly becoming centred around the parlour even when I was back in School I would still spend Saturday afternoons at the PIP working. So once again my life was increasingly being centred around helping old people and I loved what I was doing. Then one day cycling near home life took a turn for the worst. I simply fell of my bike onto a gravel road. My right knee was quite badly cut. I cleaned it dressed it and went to the local hospital. The hospital was concerned because there appeared to be gravel imbedded deep within the wound. The wound did not heal and became badly infected after many weeks the hospital decided they would have to operate. Once again the wound broke down and became infected. This process was recurrent with operation after operation. Some of the operations were absolutely agony post operatively and I remember laying in bed in tears. During this time there was one person who really used to help me it was Jim Palmer the pastor of our local Pentecostal Church. He would come and pray with me. After many more operations my wound healed. I continued my life of school, studying now for my O Levels and caring for a number of old people and going to my three churches. There were one old couple I was particularly friendly with. He was retired Col. Watson he was British but formally was in the Indian Army Ordinance Corp. They like much of my family were products of the British Raj in India. They too like my fathers family had lived in India until it became independent in 1947. Col. Watson then returned and served the rest of his career in the British Military as a Brigadier General. I never did understand why he was always called Col. In his retirement. I used to spend hours talking to Col. And Mrs Watson always at his front gate in the street. Eventually the Col. got ill and died. This resulted in Mrs Watson and I becoming even closer and she almost became like Aunty Hilda was to me. I would regularly go and visit her after school in the evenings even taking my homework there to do. The other thing about going to Mrs Watson’s bungalow was that she had a television that was one thing that was never allowed in our home when we were still at school. So I became a secret TV watcher. Unfortunately my leg problems were not over with the healing of the wound in my knee. My leg became increasingly swollen. The doctors said that this was probably lymph oedema a serious swelling caused by occlusion of the lymphatic system. From my on going medical studies I knew that there was only really one surgeon in the UK who dealt with lymphatic’s. It was Prof. J.B. Kinmonth the author of a then famous book “Lymphatics, Dieases, Lymphogrphy and Surgery”. Our local library eventually tracked down the book and it became my new favourite book. My leg continued to become increasingly swollen and regularly I would develop cellulites’ when the whole leg would become infected. I would regularly see the surgeon who obviously knew less about the condition than me because he had not read the book. It was 5th September 1979 I was 15 and had gone to London for the day to watch the funeral procession of the Assassinated Earl Mountbatten of Burma. I spent hours standing in a prominent position by Westminster Abbey. By the end of the ceremony my leg was agony and so swollen I could hardly walk. As I looked over the River Thames I could see St Thomas’ Hospital. The one hospital in the world who knew my condition. I decided to go to the accident and emergency unit and see what they could do. After being seen it was decided to admit me. I phoned home and eventually my mother had arrived with all I needed. I was placed in the care of the orthopaedic department. I lay on my hospital bed thinking why on earth am I under the orthopaedic department. The next day the Orthopaedic Consultant came to see me. I remember him well it was Fred Heatley and only a few years later I would be working with him. He looked at my leg and immediately said you are in the right hospital but the wrong department. I knew that, so I was immediately transferred to Prof. JB Kinmonth, “ah the right man” I remember me saying at last the person I need to see. Now at this point I confess I wish I could say I soon got better and everything was OK. But the story was not like that it was so long and complex. They decided that there was a problem with the lymph nodes in my groin to they operated on my groin. To cut a very long story short my groin turned out to have a lot of infected nodes. The wound broke down terribly and I needed operation after operation. At one point I was in hospital for 14 weeks without going home and had 6 more operations. The whole scenario went on for years not weeks. I would go home and back to school and still try and live my life as normally as possible. I remember being taken very ill on one occasion and developed septicaemia almost unconscious I was admitted to a local hospital. There my situation was so serious they did not know if I would survive. I remember the date it was the 29th July 1981 the day that Prince Charles got married to Lady Diana Spencer. The consultant stood at the end of my bed talking to my mother I was laying there unconscious but I could hear everything. The consultant was saying to my mother that my situation was so serious that he did not know if I would pull through but he said if it is the last thing he would do he would try to get me through this. I remember going home and the district nurse coming everyday to dress my wounds. Before I even went to school each day I would have to wait for the district nurse to come and do my dressings. By now I was doing my A Levels. I was studying Biology, Chemistry, Religious Studies and Politics. A lot of the studying for these subjects I had had to do on my own not often at school. Soon after my serious septicaemia episode the surgeon decided to do very radical surgery removing a large section of the bottom of my abdomen and much of the top of my right leg. It was radical and painful surgery but it worked. I returned to school. Now free of infection I was able to return to my voluntary work that I really loved doing helping on one of the wards at St Mary’s Hospital Sidcup. At this stage it was also the time to apply for where one would go to University or which college to study at next. There was no doubt what I wanted to do. I wanted to study anaesthetics and surgery. If one was to go the normal route to do this it would be years before one got to work in the Operating Theatre. I had learned that there was one profession that would get you to the heart of the action very quickly and that was train as an Operating Department Practitioner. Most of the teaching hospitals had training schools for this profession I applied to many of the prestigious teaching hospitals but there was one I was simply passionate about going to which was none other than St Thomas’ Hospital where I had once been a patient. The oldest hospital in the country established in 1106. I prayed so hard that I would get there. Eventually the day for the interview at St. Thomas’ came. It was a wonderful interview and I so loved my short time at the hospital. Each day I waited at the letterbox to see if the reply would come. Eventually it did and to my total disappointment it said I had not been selected. I was in total despair and cried why Lord why. You see I was sure that God had said to me that I would get there. I had a wonderful head of my 6th Form Mr Michael Amos. He knew that this was my one desire to study at St. Thomas’ Hospital. He assured me that I would end up at the best place for me. It was just a few days latter on a Saturday that I was just leaving home to travel to the hospital for my voluntary work. The postman arrived and handed me the letters. On top was one from St Thomas’ Hospital. I opened it and to my shock and horror it stated that the previous letter had been a mistake and I had indeed been selected for training that would begin on 13th September subject to being successful in my exams. I can honestly say it was the happiest day of my life. I went to the hospital with the letter and kept looking at it at every opportunity. All the hospital staff were so pleased, as were all the church people the following day. On Monday morning I went to school and just showed Mr Amos the letter, he was thrilled put his arms around me and said “you are going to go very far and nobody will be able to stop you”. He was a totally inspirational person himself. I had worked very closely with him as I was the chair of the 6th form committee which was the most senior position for a pupil in the school. He was from British Guyana, and the most senior black person at that stage in any senior school position. He totally inspired me not just in my school work but also in my immense political and international interests. I will never forget that only a few years ago I was awarded a major peace prize from the Wolf Institute at Cambridge University. The prize was presented by Baroness Valerie Amos, a senior member of the House of Lords, Mr Amos’s daughter at the prestigious Middle Temple in London. He was there with her at the presentation. It was not the first presentation to me he had attended. It gave me so much joy to see him following what was happening to me many years later. Just a few weeks after the event, Baroness Amos contacted me to say her father was critically ill and dying. I returned from Iraq and was there with him in the UK until he died and then took his funeral. I can honestly say that to me it was one of the most important services I have ever taken. Today Baroness Amos is the Deputy Secretary General of the UN. I eventually did my exams and passed them well. The 13th September came and I started my training at St Thomas’ Hospital. Being a student at St Thomas’ was more than wonderful my greatest dream had become true. I greatly enjoyed my academic study and I can honestly say there was not one subject that I did not enjoy.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 19:26:00 +0000
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