ARE YOU READY? TO GO OVER THE WALL?

There was a great big moose… he used to drink a lot of juice…

No, this isn’t a veterinarian article about diabetes; it’s one of the infectious camp-songs that will be spinning through your head at the end of a crazy fun-filled week of Over The Wall camp!

What IS Over The wall? Well, more accurately WHO is Over The Wall? Over The Wall summer camps is a national charity that runs residential summer camps for children from 8 to 16 years old, with serious illness. Modelled on Paul Newman’s famous Hole in The Wall Gang camps in the USA, Over the Wall (OTW) is a place where children who have faced, or continue to face, serious and life-threatening illness can come and have fun, build friendships, build confidence and most importantly BE KIDS, not patients.

Over the Wall has run residential camps for seven years in a school campus in Dorset, but we’re already setting up a camp for 2007 in Scotland and are scouting other venues to make the camps even more accessible to children from all over the UK and Northern Ireland. Places at camp are free to any child nominated, and medically fit to attend.

OTW relies heavily on the generosity of volunteers who give up their time to spend at camp. This can be either as a team-mate- a volunteer who accompanies and supports the camper in all their activities and new adventures, or as a member of the medical team - for doctors and nurses with experience in peadiatric care. The medical care at camp is designed to be low profile and if possible, fun, but of the high standard that these children and their parents both expect and require. For many families it is the first time their child has been away from home and they are understandably nervous about someone else caring for their child’s needs. The medical care at camp is largely nurse led but we now have doctors at each camp and are always looking for new medical volunteers.

So what does the doctor do at camp? Well a typical week starts on Saturday, before the campers arrive, organizing ‘The Med Shed’ – the rooms where all our supplies and treatments are carried out. This frequently includes gaudy decorations, balloons and face paints. We have summaries, both from the child’s lead clinician and their parents about each child’s specific medical and practical needs, which we familiarise ourselves with. It’s also a good time to gel with the rest of the med team, and also with our campers’ teams. Everyone at camp is assigned to a team – the blues, reds, or greens, which in turn are age and gender grouped.

Once the campers arrive there is a flurry of checking meds, ensuring we have all the essential pump and stoma connectors for example, and reassuring campers and parents that a safe, fantastic fun week lies ahead. After that each day the medical team dispense the childrens’ usual treatments at breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime. In between we accompany our team to activities such as canoeing, climbing, drama, arts and crafts, and the spectacularly ear-shattering ‘music’ sessions. Any problems that arise with the campers are dealt with as they occur. Anything from homesickness, broken hearts, forgotten tablets, to seizures, or threatened infection in a neutropenic child. As a camp doctor some days are hard and some are easy but all of them have at least a little fun and laughter thrown in.

So why be a camp doctor? Well, for a start it’s really good fun. Where else would you get to help take care of kids while wearing a cowboy hat, chicken suit and flippers? And it’s really fulfilling to see children, who we only normally see as patients in a hospital setting, kicking back, mucking about and having fun. Plus, the added bonus is that despite still using your medical know-how and having your ‘doctor-hat’ on, you’re not treated as ‘the doctor’. You’re just another embarrassing grown-up on the disco dance-floor, a talent-free zone at the talent show, or someone they all really want to capsize on the river while canoeing.

As ‘busman’s holidays’ go, it’s a wonderful way to spend a week. For more information on Over The Wall, go to www.otw.org.uk and follow the links for volunteers.

We look forward to seeing you soon, Over The Wall!

But I’d better run now, because there’s a moose. On the loose. Full of joohooce!