Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

Some of you may be interested in the following article gleaned from yesterday's Worthing Herald

£5,800 for life-saving hospital

AFORMER Horsham resident who battled back from near death raised £5,800 for the hospital where doctors saved his life.

Sam Noel-Paton, 34, who now lives in Nottingham, had a subarachnoid brain haemorrhage - the most serious – which kills one in three people who suffer one.

He attended St Mary's School, Normandy, when he lived in Horsham and then attended Christ's Hospital School.

His father, Duncan, was the director of drama at the prestigious independent school, while his mother Kezia worked as a GP at the Park Surgery in Horsham.

To raise money for Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre he set off in August on a sponsored hike of the West Highland Way - a 95-mile footpath which stretches from Glasgow to Fort William, smashing his target of £800.

Sam said: "The West Highland Way went very well - I struggled at times but never strayed from the path and completed it in its entirety.

"As we crested the last rise we could see the huge bulk of Ben Nevis directly ahead and far below the start of Fort William.

"It was an awe inspiring and emotional site considering the amount of effort we'd put in to get here - the miles walked and the personal goals reached."

Sam was joined by 25 friends and family on the journey, including five ex-Christ's Hospital teachers: Frank Pattison, John Denison, Ian Torkington, Ross Stuart and John Shippen.

There were eight full-time walkers plus Sam's mum Kezia and Dad Duncan providing vehicle and medical support.

To donate visit http://www.justgiving.com/noelpaton.
The event photos and blog can also be found at http://www.noel-paton.co.uk.

Sponsored him a while back, good to see he completed it.

WELL DONE SAM!

Jeez, poor Sam! I remember him, glad he pulled through.


Has anyone else noticed a high incidence of serious brain illness among 1980s CH pupils? I count 5 so far that I know of, including Sam, who were all within 3 years of each other.

Maybe it's average, I don't know, but it seems statistically odd that the only group of people I'm aware of having suffered such awful problems are all from CH.

Reuben wrote:Has anyone else noticed a high incidence of serious brain illness among 1980s CH pupils? I count 5 so far that I know of, including Sam, who were all within 3 years of each other.

Maybe it's average, I don't know, but it seems statistically odd that the only group of people I'm aware of having suffered such awful problems are all from CH.

.....and two fatalities in the 70s - Simon Randall and Patrick Pike.

Good for him - I remembered when he came back after uni and worked as a bocker for a while in the kitchens...

sport! wrote:

Reuben wrote:Has anyone else noticed a high incidence of serious brain illness among 1980s CH pupils? I count 5 so far that I know of, including Sam, who were all within 3 years of each other.

Maybe it's average, I don't know, but it seems statistically odd that the only group of people I'm aware of having suffered such awful problems are all from CH.

.....and two fatalities in the 70s - Simon Randall and Patrick Pike.

Hi Sport,
I have only good memories of CH but perhaps the only , haunting memory was that night that took Simon away.
I will never forget it ,being in the same dormitory and not knowing what was happening.
Simon was a great kid and he was a real loss to our house.
A real tragedy.

I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HIM.

Reuben wrote:Jeez, poor Sam! I remember him, glad he pulled through.


Has anyone else noticed a high incidence of serious brain illness among 1980s CH pupils? I count 5 so far that I know of, including Sam, who were all within 3 years of each other.

Maybe it's average, I don't know, but it seems statistically odd that the only group of people I'm aware of having suffered such awful problems are all from CH.

Reuben, don't forget that you are dealing with a CH sample of about 850 people over nearly a decade - how big is your non-CH sample with whom you are in constant contact?
The official figures for brain tumours were somewhere like 7000 diagnosed per annum with 3,000 being benign; with 5 cases personally known to me and from a far smaller sample than yours but covering a wider age range (actually 7 to age in the 60's) I have to suspect that the real figures are far greater.
That of course refers only to cancer - the figures for strokes must be greater by a degree of magnitude. When I was young only a few people survived a stroke, of those almost all died from the second whilst a third killed the rest; these days medicine has progressed to the point where very prompt diagnosis and treatment can allow victims to have many strokes. For this reason strokes appear to be far more common even if the number of people affected has risen only in proportion to the population increase.

In conclusion I don't think that CH is specially affected but just that you had a bigger sized group sample than many people.


When I was at CH I personally don't recall anything worse than a single broken arm but such things were rarely mentioned.