First thing the next morning I went in to visit her. She was in the Intensive Care Unit and I had to battle through a jungle of wires and tubes just to get to her. She had two fluid lines going into her, a urinary catheter, a drain out of her abdomen and four ECG wires. The ICU unit, surprisingly, was a very calm room, full of composed, friendly and helpful clinicians and nurses.
A week later Tosca was still in the ICU. Her heart had regained its normal rhythm, but she wasn’t recovering as fast as she should. She was very depressed and not eating, which was so unlike her. The staff decided that maybe a change of scenery would help, so she was moved to the much brighter soft-tissue ward. Another day passed, and she was much the same, so they took a further sample of fluid from her abdomen. The culture showed that she had a very resistant strain of bacteria that wasn’t responding to the antibiotics she was on. It was a testament to her strength that she’d made it this far.
Tosca was put on one of the strongest antibiotic drugs available, and over the next few days she gradually began to improve. As a vet student I was allowed to visit often, and I spent hours every day sitting in her kennel giving her cuddles, catching up on my studies and talking to final-year vet students about their experience of being on rotations. Tosca was still refusing food, and she had lost an alarming amount of weight. The ICU nurses tried to entice her to eat, and I tried, too, but she refused everything until, after eight days, when the clinicians were starting to seriously consider placing a feeding tube in her under anaesthetic, she finally let me give her a small piece of sausage. I joked that she must have heard that if she didn’t eat she would need to have another procedure.
After three weeks she was finally well enough to go home. It was a Friday, which was great, as it meant I could travel back with her. My parents met me at the hospital and Tosca was brought out, still weak and wobbly, but with a wag in her tail. Mum and Dad had tears in their eyes; we all adored Tosca and we had come so close to losing her.
We put her on her bed in the boot of the car for the two-hour journey home. Soon after pulling out of the car park, Tosca started howling and yapping. It was a habit that she had when she was excited or wanted to go for a walk. Normally it annoyed us, but now the sound of her yaps was like sweet music. We all laughed. We had our Tosca back.
Over the following months Tosca recovered well, but then she gradually lost her sight and her head began to tilt to the left, confirming that a slow-growing brain tumour was probably the root cause of her problems. But even blind she coped remarkably well. She knew the layout of the house and she still insisted on charging around as she always had. Since trying to slow her down was an impossible task, we put bubble wrap around the trees in the garden and horse boots on the legs of the dining room chairs. She had no problem finding us and then, as she always had, sitting at our feet and pawing at our laps until we gave her our undivided attention. And her radar still guided her unerringly towards the dishwasher after dinner, where she licked the plates as it was being loaded.
We were lucky with Tosca. It could so easily have gone the other way for her, but she’d survived and, a year on, she was still doing well.
Before I left dermatology for my next placement we were told that our student year group had been approached by ITN Productions, who were casting for a series about trainee vets that would be broadcast on the BBC. We were all invited to a question and answer session in which they explained that any student could apply, and that they would then pick up to ten for a reality series, following us through our final year of training.
Around a hundred students went along to the casting sessions. I decided to apply because, well, what was there to lose? And I was curious – what would it be like to be filmed? I once dreamed of being an actress, and as a child I even went to weekend stage school. Now this was the nearest I was likely to get, so I decided to have a go. At the session the producers chatted to us for a bit, and then each of us had to spend a minute talking to camera about ourselves. I thought a minute was going to seem like forever, but it went too quickly, and afterwards I left feeling that I hadn’t said most of what I’d planned to say.
I didn’t have time to think about it for long because the following day I packed my bags again and headed off to Wales for a fortnight of farm work. This time the five of us in my rotation group were working with another group, so there were ten of us staying together in a rented cottage. We were there to do what’s known as population work – studying herds of cows on local farms and writing reports on how to improve the standard of health in each herd. We had to score every cow on nutrition, locomotion and general health, so it was pretty repetitive work.
The days when James Herriot dashed out to save the life of an ailing cow have given way to economically tougher times, as farmers, who often struggle to make a profit, can’t afford to be sentimental or have one sick cow affect the health of a herd. The emphasis has to be on keeping the whole herd as healthy as possible.
With ten of us under one roof, tensions began to run high in the student house. Some of us wanted to write our reports as we went along, others wanted to leave it to the last minute, so there were a few clashes.
To escape the strains within the house – and the endless cows – Lucy and I went out to explore the area with Chloe, a friend from the other group. We drove to the Brecon Beacons, and decided to stop and walk up a hill that we were passing.
‘Won’t take long,’ Lucy said cheerfully. ‘It’s only a little hill. The fresh air will do us good.’
An hour later we were working up a fair sweat as we climbed. Somehow the ‘little hill’ had become more of a mountain, but having decided to climb it none of us was going to be the first to turn back. By the time we got to the top we were hot, thirsty and exhausted. We sat on the grass, admiring the wild ponies and stunning views.
‘See? It was worth it,’ Lucy said, taking a swig of water and passing me the bottle. ‘And going down will be a doddle.’
I was examining the large blister on my heel. ‘Lucy,’ I said, smiling sweetly, ‘next time you see a “small hill” and decide to climb it, count me out.’
Soon after we got back to college at the end of the fortnight we heard that ITN had picked the first five or six students for the series. We were all agog to know who had been chosen, and were delighted to hear that one of them was Grace. She was stunned. It was going to mean working with a film crew trailing behind her at some of her trickiest moments, so she wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or horrified.
I heard that I’d been put on a list of students they were undecided about. I was pretty sure that meant it would probably never happen, and that was fine with me. I had plenty to occupy me over the coming weeks and felt relieved that I wouldn’t have a camera crew there to add to my embarrassment by recording the inevitable trail of blunders I’d be leaving in my wake.
CHAPTER FOUR
As I stepped out of the airport terminal the warm night air and the sweet, delicate scent of the ganna bushes enveloped me, and the unmistakeable chirruping of cicadas, the sound of Africa, filled my ears.
Fourteen hours earlier I had left a cold, grey London behind me and set off for Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. We flew via Johannesburg, where I changed planes for the final leg. As we began our descent I forgot about my stiff shoulders and cramped legs, and began to feel more and more excited. I hadn’t seen Jacques since he’d visited me at Christmas, and it felt like an age.
He was waiting for me in the arrivals area. At six-foot-six he was impossible to miss. As I waited impatiently for my bag to arrive on the carousel we grinned at each other through the window. Mine always seemed to be the last bag to arrive … But then I was in his arms for the warmest of hugs. He grabbed my bags and we headed out to the truck, where Jacques presented me with a beautiful bunch of lilies. He always brought me flowers, and he always left them in the car, just in case I didn’t like them – as if I wouldn’t!
We