Profile

I love work, but also have many other interests, like running, hot yoga, baking bread, growing veg on the allotment, and brewing beer! I also like travelling and eating lots of different kinds of foods from all over the world.

Sometimes I work in clinics where I see new patients who might have problems with their joints. I order blood tests, x-rays, and ultrasounds, and sometimes have to give them joint injections.

The public think only old people get arthritis, but I do a young persons clinic where I see people from the age of 17 – 25.

Other times I work in the lab, trying to discover new things about the cells of people with arthritis.

My typical day varies depending on what ‘hat’ I’ve got on. Sometimes I work in hospital and see patients in clinic, but mostly I am writing up my PhD thesis.

When I am working the lab I work with cells from patients with arthritis. This is usually in a petri dish or test tube. I am trying to discover new things about the immune cells and arthritis. Immune cells usually fight off infections, but in arthritis they attack the patients’ own joints, causing pain, swelling, and sometimes irreversible damage.