Kates Journal

I agreed to do a third night. Why did I agree to do a third night? Anyone? Oh. Yeah. Money.

Someone rang in sick this morning just as I was about to leave; and my ward’s temporary manager looked pleadingly at me and said ‘Would you like to do a bank night tonight? No pressure….’. I am *so* fracking tired. I didn’t get home ’til past 9, ‘cos I went to occy health today to get my occy health letter.

And I did sleep, despite the builders buildering. The floor is now going back down in the back room, which is most cool. They’ve also dug a hole for the soil pipe. I’ve been good today, too. I’ve got quotes for getting the bath I want re-enamelled. Well, spray enamelled. I can’t afford proper vitreous glass baking re-enamelling. That being quite pricey. But spray enamel seems to be ‘okay’ and it’s not like I use the bath a lot, so hey. Let’s see how that goes.

I’ve also ordered the bits to service Brick. I need to get a bunch of crimp / solder connectors (and a crimping too) and see if I can’t find the cause of the unbalasted side of the circuit’s failure. Jump-leads under the bonnet to start are very effective, but also tedious.

Uh, I still need to ring about the Enfield. I’ve moved ringing NHSP and saying I’m moving my jobishness to another place of employ until tomorrow. My head currently feels like it’s filled with small pointy things which are occasionally attempting to stick out the front of it. Oh, and I need to e-mail the Viva person with a Viva e-mail about windscreeny changey, making the bloody thing seal-y goodness.

Anyhow, in the name of something to distract you all go look at this, and then find me somewhere where it’s showing that I can get to.

I promised dull house pics, and here, without further ado – are some dull house pics:

The bathroom is proceeding according to the plans: the builders having removed the floor with astonishing rapidity are now working towards the point where they can put it back:

One thing that this has revealed (apart from more, what appears to be inactive woodworm) is that, well, a professional electrician is worth his weight in faecal matter…

And I thought *my* wiring was untidy. That is a hideous, hideous mess. At least my junction boxes are fixed to things. And what worries me is that that junction box appears to contain both the ring-main and the lighting circuit. Or I think it does. At least, the circuit, well, it’s… oh anyhow. That disaster of a box is going to have to be examined.

And also, when he rewired, he clearly didn’t feel it was worth going to the effort of removing the old wiring:

That’s 1940s or 50s, rubber insulated wiring. The rubber’s completely perished, when you move it it just cracks and then sheds like a moulting rabbit; but it (thankfully) doesn’t appear to be live. I shall endeavour to remove some of it :-)

At any rate, the time is coming when I need to put the new bathroom in, which means ordering it :-)

Woot.

Oh, and found beneath the floorboards? A bit of 60s (?) packaging. Doesn’t beat the 1940’s Aviator cigarette packed my dad found in my parent’s house, but still :-)

Flickr Set for the bigger versions

Sometimes I disagree with what we do; I think that as a culture we cling desperately to the last shreds of life at whatever cost. It doesn’t mean I don’t do my job, I do my job to the best of my abilities, but sometimes I disagree with what I’m asked to do.

We, being a Care of the Older Person ward have a lot of people who’s quality of life is pretty poor. Bedbound and incontinent, with dementia; many of our patients don’t, or won’t eat; don’t or can’t walk, and I wonder how much awareness of the world they truly have anymore.

Certainly their personality seems largely gone (or changed beyond recognition); but we fight for their lives, with interventions that are painful, strip them of their dignity, and just seem… wrong, to me.

But – where a patient’s not stated beforehand that they don’t want these moderately extreme interventions – like for example – surgery to put a feeding tube into their stomach – so we can safely feed them when they’ve lost their swallow/gag reflexes. Well, then we tend to go ahead and do it. And I wondered, last night, as I put a feeding tube into a patient who’s confused (dementia) and immobile whether it was really the right thing to do. I know it’s what the *family* want, but is it what he’d've wanted?

I can’t say, except for myself, and y’know what, I don’t want heroic interventions to keep me alive. If I’ll recover, and be independent (at least largely) – or if that is a high probability (like 80%), then sure, heroic me all you want. But if my heart stops, it stays stopped (thanks all the same) and if my life will consist of nothing more than laying in a bed, then no; thank you. It’s not what I want.

Another couple of nights. Just two this time, although with the extremely silly need to drive to Manchester the day after the second one (don’t worry – plan is to come home, sleep and then go in the afternoon). Nights mean that, yet again I’m swinging my body clock around by 12 hours.

It’s slightly harder to do this this time, ‘cos the builders were indeed here. Rather briefly; apparently he’s at college tonight (I have to ask him what he’s doing there), and his tooth became loose and painful (it was noticably wobbly) and he went off to the dentist earlier…

So, in fact, they were here from 1030 til, maybe 3. And then at around 1730-1800 to drop off the wood. More unexciting photos of my floor being absent to follow, I’m sure.

Anyhow, without too much trauma I’ve filled in the CRB form, tomorrow (all being well) I shall head to occupational health – and then in the name of trying to do as many things as possible tomorrow I’ll be mailing off my Oc Health reply and taking in the CRB form asap.

4 weeks sounds a long time, but in reality it’s not a long time to get a CRB check done and contracts in and signed…

Especially when you’re working nights, and one of the weeks includes a bank holiday.

And in other news, my mum and I are off to view an Enfield on Sunday. Well, assuming the bloke agrees to us turning up on Sunday – he certainly seemed happy with such a suggestion. The filing cabinet’s fallen off my list of desired objects (I didn’t bid in the end)  – this is because it shot up by over 100 quid – with 2 hours still left in the auction. Since they’ve been known to go for around 20 and I was only thinking of bidding 30ish, well. Yeah.

Was a nice one though – all old wood. I’m starting to entertain the concept of attempting to de-oil the metal one I used to have in the garage. It’s neat, if not beautiful. Anyway, I should go and make some sort of food type substance for me to take to work.

So, it’s been four weeks since my bin was emptied. I realised that today. I’ve finally managed to fill my outside bin to the point I need it emptied… by putting two carpets in it.

I’m not quite sure how I generate so little rubbish – obviously the fact that an awful lot of my food is not prepackaged; or is prepacked in plastic bags (recycled) or cling-wrap (binned, but very small) helps. And my habit of not always remembering to eat, that probably helps. But I still find it faintly odd that after 4 weeks all I have to dispose of as rubbish is two small carrier bags mostly full of tissues (and they’re *months* worth of rubbish from the lounge and bathroom), and two two-third’s full binbags of kitchen waste. Paper and card are recycled, plastic’s recycled…uh. Yeah. It’s kind of odd.

But this week, yes, the bin is very full. 2 grotty old carpets filled it to fullness. So I’m kinda glad tomorrow is bin-day.

On the matter of the car, we appear (touch wood) to have finally reached understanding of why the bloody thing wasn’t starting. It turns out that despite (when I checked) the coil appearing to get a full 12 volts of unballasted little flowing electrons when in the Starter position, it appears that it’s not *actually* working as-such. So current bodge is to slap a jump lead twixt coil+ and the battery, start the car, and then whip it off. This is fine, fine and indeed dandy, except that it’s been raining almost continuously today and I didn’t much enjoy getting wet.

Still, that moves us onto the topic of the coming two weeks. And these weeks are special excitings week in Kateland. Kate’s hoping to:

- Have a new floor (or at least a doubly strong floor) in her bathroom
- Collect a (bathroom) sink, a boiler and the oven (you have *no* idea how much I’ve missed having an oven. Really. No. Idea.)
- Receive via postymagic a new hob
- Commence work on the upstairs plumbing
But the list doesn’t end there. I’m also hoping to:
- Win a filing cabinet, bath and a period radiator on e-bay
- Collect said bath and filing cabinet, and then later said radiator.
- Ideally reach a stage where I can get the gas-engineer in to fit the boiler, although I’m suspecting that’s beyond unlikely.
And then there’s the ‘doing’ list:
- Fix and service the Viva
- Get bike back on road
- Get welding sorted for Viva
- Lay path in garden
- Plant garden
- Read about emergency nursing
- Buy and collect mom’s electric car (I hope)
- Complete my CRB form, the Occy Health form
- Visit a clinic *and* the GP
I’d also like to see friends.

I’m thinking that I’ll both be ‘very busy’, ‘very tired’ and may have planned an excessive number of things into my not-quite-two weeks.