Patricia would rather laugh than complain
 Patricia has been visiting Rachel House since it opened and clearly loves the place.
Scary
“Coming here for the first time was a bit scary because I didn’t know anyone,” she told me. “The idea of it being a hospice also bothered me at first — my doctor said it was a place where people go to die. But it’s just not like that at all.
“Yes, people may die here. But that isn’t what it’s about. It gives people a quality of life they just wouldn’t get at home.
“Here I can get to do what I want. I can go bowling, go to the cinema, safari park, Deep Sea World, theatres and restaurants. It’s great.
“Now, as soon as I leave, I start counting the days until I come back.”
I suggest to Patricia that she knows more than her doctor did and she throws her head back and laughs again.
“I know much more than him. I used to always get a row for telling them what to do. I remember a nurse asking me, ‘Who’s in charge here?’ I said ‘You are, but I’m much more experienced!’”
She laughs at herself and it’s impossible not to laugh with her.
Patricia recalls how Real Radio came to Rachel House and were so taken with that throaty, infectious laugh that they recorded it for posterity. DJ Dave Knight asked her why she laughed like that and she told him the answer was simple — she was happy.
Transplants
Now, I don’t know about you, but if I had to endure what Patricia has, then I’d be less than happy. She had three kidney transplants before she was five and another one 10 years later.
Yet the nearest you will get to a moan from her is that she gets fed up with her dialysis treatment.
Considering it lasts for three and a half hours each time, for three days every week — and has done so since she was one — then I think she has a right to be a bit fed up.
The dialysis means she can’t go on holiday and has only two days a week free to attend Telford College — she studies politics and art — but even that has been cut to one because of a lack of suitable classes. There is one other class that would suit her but a lack of funding means she can’t attend it.
But Patricia doesn’t want to talk about her problems — she wants to talk about Ewan McGregor.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she snorts when I eventually get round to it.
The star of screen, stage and surprise visits was in Rachel House last month and spent most of it in the company of Ms Coleman.
“He was really funny,” said Patricia.
Singing
“Hardly anyone knew he was coming to Rachel House that day and there was only me and a boy, Richard, around. Ewan was playing his guitar and singing songs.
“He just made most of them up. He was singing ‘I don’t know the words but these will do’ and just singing nonsense. It was great. I liked him a lot.
“I’d already met his brother and mum and dad, but it was the first time I’d met Ewan. I’d always missed him when he’d visited before.
“We chatted for ages and talked a lot about his films. I told him how I’d seen
Moulin Rouge, Down With Love, Star Wars and A Life Less
Ordinary. We had a good laugh.”
Sadly, as happens so often, Patricia’s dialysis eventually got in the way.
She had to go for her treatment, leaving Ewan behind — although not before she got a goodbye kiss!
“I told my friends when I got back home and they were so jealous,” she giggled.
Patricia reads a lot — she loves Jacqueline Wilson and Dick King-Smith — has almost the entire collection of Carry On movies on DVD and enjoys music, clothes and shopping.
She’s no different from any other young woman, except that her life is limited by her need for dialysis. Her life is limited by it, but not defined by it.
There’s no time for complaining when you’re too busy laughing.
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Patricia and Sue together at Rachel House.
