Fred's Journey

Life gets in the way of achieving your dreams until something hits you so hard you have to stop in your tracks and reassess exactly where you are in life and where you are going.

Short background

I was born in South Africa and by the time I finished school at 17, South Africa was fighting a war in Angola. The details is irrelevant to this article.

I had two choices, I will go to the forces as a conscript for two years, or join permanently. I decided on the latter and eventually qualified as an aircraft maintenance engineer. Got married, the war ended and I resigned from the air force, started a business, got divorced and emigrated to Northern Ireland in 2002.

My Story...

From as young as I can remember I always had my head in the clouds and wanted to become a pilot. While I was attending college in the airforce. Unlike my peers, my immediate goal was not to own a car but to fly. I enroled in a flying school instead and can clearly remember thumbing a lift to the airfield to go and fly. Did a solo check ride and life got in the way.

I was transferred to the other side of the country with no access to a flying school. It was around 15 years before I restarted my flying training. Did a solo checkride and yes, life got in the way again…

Emigrated

When I landed in Northern Ireland, my aircraft qualifications were not valid and I had to resit qualifying exams. (That is normal). I decided it was not worth the effort and made a career change to health care.

Started out in community care and later moved to a nursing home for people with challenging behaviour and learning disabilities. I enjoyed every minute of it but the flying is still on hold. I had to make do with flying simulators in a virtual world.

A couple of years later I made the move to working in a hospital and working towards my Senior Nursing Assistant qualification. Working in a Urology/ENT surgical ward, I felt I eventually found my true calling. Nothing gave me more pleasure to see a patient walking out the front door after a week or two of pure pain and agony.

Disaster

A pandemic hit the world and changes everything. Our ward was changed into a COVID ward and instead of surgical patients we now have medical patients. Manageable and working as a team we manage to get the work done and patients discharged.

The patient that changed my world was admitted after a fall and head injury. Been helping with her care for a couple of weeks and she was just about ready to be discharged.

I was off for a couple of days and out of the blue received a phone call from my manager stating that there has been a serious allegation made against me and safeguarding suggested I should work under supervision on my next shifts. After some deliberation, I decided to cancel my weekend shifts until I can figure out what the allegations were.

On the 20^th July 2020 at 15h15 there was a knock on my front door and two policemen arrested me for alleged sexual assault.

During the subsequent interview, it came to light that I apparently, on the 14^th July at around 03h00 in the morning, I leaned over her and kissed her on the lips while wearing full red PPE…

I was bailed pending further investigation and suspended from work.

During the 4 months, I was under investigation by the police as well as safeguarding people, I was not allowed to contact anyone of my peers. I was basically stuck in my house with my two beautiful cats. Too scared to go outside because someone might just recognise me and ask uncomfortable questions. After all, I am now a person with a police record.

I will not be going into any details, but eventually, I received a letter from the prosecutor stating “there was no supporting evidence”. The safeguarding simply said. “the case is closed by the trust and no further action will be taken”.

The words that hit me the hardest were “draw a line under this and move on. When can you get back to work.”

To say I was disgusted by how I was treated would not even touch the sides. Statements like this coming from an organisation that shouts “zero tolerance against any form of abuse” from the rooftops. Meanwhile, back at the range, no action will be taken. Not even against a patient that made false allegations of a very serious nature causing emotional trauma and mental health crises that left me in a very dark place a couple of times.

Reassess life

Most of what happened during my journey so far were manageable. It is a simple fact of life that things go wrong and one must carry on.

However, getting arrested and ending up with a police record despite the established fact that I am not guilty was definitely not part of the original journey.

I came to the conclusion that no matter how much you give to others or how dedicated you are to your job. When the proverbial “shit hits the fan”, you are on your own.

I realised that for far too long I prioritised the wrong things in life. I prioritised everyone and everything above my own well-being and to survive this latest twist in the road and not end up in a mental health institution, I will have to adjust my priorities.

Taking action

What is the one thing that has always been my biggest dream? The answer is simple: Get my pilot licence.

So I robbed my ISA account and went flying. Starting from scratch for the third time. Hanging on to my two previous expired licences motivates me to keep going.

Doing something that you love, getting the pleasure out of it that only you can take responsibility for. A pleasure that is not dependent on anyone else but yourself. Facing the challenges to achieving your dream. Finding ways to pay for it. Make time for it.

The road was long and hard with a lot of bumps and hard landings. Frustration and tears. Laughter and joy when I finally passed all the exams and final skills tests.

I am a pilot!!