Now mature but still wish to study medicine

If this is your dream then find a way to make it work.

If you look in to it you will find someone older, someone poorer, someone sicker that has overcome all the hurdles and still got there.

AS a previous poster has said there will always be someone who is sicker, older or poorer. It's a point well made. If it has been your ambition to study medicine then I think the next step is to thoroughly research it. Would Gradmed be an option? It is a year or 2 shorter, although you need to have a 2:1 ata minimum. You are correct in saying that you will have to pay fees as a mature student , who would be undertaking a second undergrad degree if you went down the mature student route.

I think that with medicine it can often be seen as a "prestigous" course to study. The danger is that people can end up studying it because they like the idea of studying ,medicine rather than the actual course itself. Also the function of a Medical degree is to train its graduates to be compotent Doctors, that's it. If you don't want to be a Doctor then I would advise against studying medicine. If you're not quite sure about whether or not you want to be a Doctor then I would advise talking to Doctors about their careers and Jobs. If you are quite certain that you want to work as a Doctor, then go for it. Once you Graduate from Medicine then there is another year as an Intern then 4 years of further training on a scheme to be a GP or a minimum of 6 years training if you pursue a hospital based speciality, which in practice can often end up being over a decade. All of this is not meant to put you off, it's more to provide you with some perspective, studying medicine is a considerable time and financial investment.