Island Life Magazine Ltd December/January 2018 | Page 33

Interview
A poignant personal memory
from her childhood probably
holds a key to Michele Legg’s
present-day focus on elderly
mental health.
Dr Legg reveals that when she was a
pupil at Ryde Convent School in the early
1980s, her own maternal grandmother
developed dementia, and, among other
things, began to confuse one member of
the family with another.
“As a teenager, I used to visit her, and
I’d keep trying to get her to remember
things” Dr Legg recalls.
“Of course I didn’t realise it at the time,
but what we now know is by doing that
you are adding to the pressure, which
tends to make dementia patients even
more agitated”.
That close-up experience of the effects
dementia can have on a whole family
were to prove invaluable in her future
career – but at that stage, the young
Michele Legg had no thought of going
into Medicine. In fact, she says she could
just have easily opted for the Arts.
Early calling
Though she was born on the mainland,
Michele’s family had re-located to the
Island from Biggin Hill when she was
aged 10 and her brother was four. Dad
Michael was a self-employed builder
and their mum Patricia was a part-time
antiques dealer – a trade that the young
“At first, my mum
wasn’t that keen for
me to do it because of
all the years it would
mean at medical
school.”
Michele with her children Dylan and Conor
Michele found fascinating and could
easily have taken up herself.
“I loved the antiques and seriously
considered studying Fine Art for a while”
she says.
However, during her five years at
the Convent School she also began to
consider medicine as an alternative career.
“I’m not sure why – it was an idea that
just seemed to grow with me” she says.
“At first, my mum wasn’t that keen for
me to do it because of all the years it
would mean at medical school – and
actually it was a bit of a departure for my
family as nobody has ever gone to college
or University before”.
Once her family realised that she was
serious about medicine though, they were
right behind her.
She won a scholarship to Portsmouth
High School and then left the Island at 19
to begin her studies at UCL and Middlesex
Medical School. The same uncle who had
paid her school fees at Ryde Convent
helped the family again to finance her
University costs.
Michele recalls being a hard-up student
in London, working during the summer
holidays as a cleaner in University halls, to
help subsidise her study costs.
“Looking back I can see that I was quite
poor at college so I didn’t do all those
wonderful things you’re meant to do as
a student in London” she says, “but I did
really enjoy my studies and that was what
mattered”.
Her hard work paid off with an Honours
degree in neuro-science – but she never
really enjoyed the years she spent working
on hospital wards as part of her training.
“I found the environment very old-school
and hierarchical, and one in which I always
felt quite awkward” she says. “I think I
always knew that I would be more suited
to working as a GP.”
Having spent four years working in
London hospitals, Michele did two years of
medical rotation in Yeovil - including a very
significant six months in geriatrics, which
seemed to nail her main area of interest.
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