As part of Overseas NHS Workers Appreciation Day we spoke to we spoke to Keerthana Rajkumar, acute medical clinical fellow
Why did you join CUH?
I joined CUH as all the books I had, had 'Cambridge University Press' on it !
Cambridge was well known as a centre of learning and research and obviously was a sense of pride in being offered a job here.
What were your most memorable moments when you first arrived at CUH?
My first day at Addenbrookes, just walking along the hallways and feeling a sense of accomplishment.
Getting to know a culturally different set of patients, a work ethos that is new and the glaring in your face respect for life everyone had that was new to me coming from India.
What makes you proud to be a part of CUH?
Being part of a hospital that forges forward research in all areas, a department that helps you in every possible way, a team that nurtures your learning and colleagues that have now become good friends.
These are the things that CUH gives you. And makes you proud not only to be part of a hospital that’s well known all over the world but also knows how to look after it’s international graduates !
Tell us something about yourself...
I grew up reading a lot of poems by English authors and stories by Enid Blyton.
My love story with daffodils goes back to when I was maybe 8 years old in India.
I was taught the poem Daffodils in school and we had a painting of it in the text book, of one single flower.
"Spring is here and so are the daffodils - doing their sprightly dance!"
I spent days imagining multitudes of them “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze”
Then when I was 15 my mother visited England and all I wanted was a daffodil!
She brought back one, pressed in her bible unsure if she was allowed to pick one off the side of the road!
And now here I am, in a place, brought life to me by my mother and English teachers!
I don’t have fancy tea parties like the famous 5 in the Enid Blyton books because it’s raining all the time!
But I have been to Ullswater where Wordsworth was inspired by these flowers alongside the glistening waters.
And I now have daffodils in my garden.
Dreams do come true!
“And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”