DAVID Seelig has always wanted to be a nurse and it seems his ambition might at last be achieved… in his SEVENTIES.
Despite recovering from prostate cancer only recently, he is now Britain’s oldest-ever medical student.
The 74-year-old grand-father will be 76 by the time he qualifies but yesterday he insisted he should be judged on whether he can do the job, not on how old he is.
“It’s hard for anyone to work as a nurse, especially someone in later life,” he said. “But if you are still active and open to new ideas then you should go for it.”
David’s bid to become a nurse comes more than 50 years after his first attempt.
As a young man he dropped out of medical school to serve in the RAF, and later worked in the City of London.
A second attempt to train as a nurse in the 1990s foundered when he suffered a serious accident.
David, from Surrey, beat prostate cancer in 2010 but said it made him determined to fulfil his dream.
“When you have come face to face with the Grim Reaper it makes you see what it is important,” he said.
“When I saw the email offer of a place on a nursing course from Kingston University I was so happy.”
Ironically the Sunday Mirror revealed last month how Britain’s longest-serving nurse Jean Colclough is retiring… at the age of 74.
David told the Nursing Standard: “When I qualify at 76, I reckon I can put another 14 years on that.”