Kates Journal

So, *BREATHE*. I’ve not been this stressed for a while.

The 3000 word literature review I’m deeply unhappy with. The underlying research is…not appropriate. I should have spotted it when I started reviewing it, but honestly, I reviewed it in between shifts and on trains and didn’t quite twig that it was such utter shite and that I should extend my review to find more primary research. I kept finding papers and going ‘oh, that doesn’t quite fit’ and discarding Randomised Controlled Trials or Cohort studies and didn’t realise that all I had left was reviews and meta-analyses. It’s a bit of an all round disaster, really, but I’ll attempt to make it as good as I can and we’ll see if I can scrape a pass.

Kathryn’s kindly read through it and given me lots of cuddles to try and help me find my calm centre* as opposed to my beating the crap out of myself for moronicism** centre, which I find startlingly easy to locate.

My dissertation proposal is progressing somewhat better. This is the 10 minute break between sitting down and ‘appraising’ all the papers I’ve got (I’m still short two, but I can’t really help that) and actually writing the review of them. I usually like a few days for it to slosh around in my brain and allow my subconscious to connect dots (it works surprisingly well). However, I’ve not got that freedom, so I’m having ten minutes, a cup of tea, and attempting to put some of the stress I’m feeling far away.

It’s not really working. I’d forgotten how stress feels. No, really. I mean, stress that’s not job*** related. Job related stress I can deal with with a motorbike, or a run down the river, or a chat with my beloved. This stress lurks in the pit of my stomach and runs around inside my head screaming unhelpfully. It makes me clean the kitchen, do laundry, have an urge to do anything to distract me from it. It brings out my worst prevaracatory tendencies, and then shouts at me internally for not working.

Anyhow. Wish me luck, I’ve an essay to write and then a 16 day stretch of shifts****.

* Ha. Like I have one. :)
** moronisism? Meh.
*** Not as in ‘sick patients make me stressed’ because they don’t. I get an adrenaline hit when I’m preparing to look after someone sick, and run round inside my head mentally trying to collect all the things I should be doing, but the actual work, no. What makes me stressed is not being able to do my job properly (when it’s uber busy) or staff-relation stuff. That makes me quite stressy.
**** Well, I finish at 7:45am from a night shift then start my induction the next day, so I’ve kind of got a day off, ish, at day 8. I don’t really count it as a day off though.

So, I should be writing and editing my paper, although I’ve set aside tomorrow to do that, while Pepper sitting, again. I might hide myself in Nikki / Kate’s office and write like a demon tomorrow. I’ll be spared many of my traditional escape routes, being as it’s the weekend I shall have less on Twitter, and my RSS reader is likely to be less full of ‘stuff’ than it is on a weekday.

So today, at work, I discovered that I was, in fact, right. I do earn my annual leave up on a day by day basis, not on a monthly basis (apparently). I wasn’t that angsty about it, just asked because I’ve got two random days to do on a weekend after I’ve notionally finished, so it would be handy. I just got a message back saying I need to ensure I take my annual leave that I’ve accrued. So it seems that for, essentially, my first 2 weeks of work at the new hospital I’ll still officially be employed by my old trust, and just be on days off and annual leave. Which is a bit weird. Unfortunately, there are insufficient staff for me to take the annual leave at the weekend, which means (I think) that I’ll work a week of nights, have one day off, do induction week in my new place, work two days in my old job, then start at my new place properly… I may have trouble remembering where I’m going on any particular day!

I’m now into the day-counting phase, with 13 shifts (including the 2 random ones) left to go, and people at work asking me every few minutes when I’m leaving, which is odd. I’m looking forward to long days though, and working only 3 (long) days a week, as opposed to at least 5 days every week.

Hopefully this means that progress will start to happen on the house again, which is something I’ve been missing – and finding very frustrating. Because while I’ve been sick there were so many things I was meant to be achieving. Also, I really, really want to finish my desk. Really, really, really. I’ve made the top – it just needs trimming to the right width, sanding and oiling / varnishing. I think I’ve abandoned my beautiful height adjustable, counterbalanced, standing / sitting desk. Why? Because I want a desk. Now please. I find working on my paper much easier at a desk, and since my dissertation is going to be starting shortly, I’ll be wanting to have it to dissertate at, or whatever the correct term for writing a dissertation is.

Still. In two weeks time, things should start to happen.

In the mean time, I need to fix my bike*, and I need to fix the garden gate so that I can actually get the bike out of the garage and go to work in the mornings without carrying the bike up the entire length of the garden, through the house, and out onto the street. I was going to fix the garage door…then I realised that because of the two chunky padlocks on the outer door, that won’t help, necessarily.

On the plus side, since getting home I’ve sat down and listened to Gladsome, Humour and Blue (If you’ve not encountered them…), and Amy Winehouse. I’ve drunk some delicious and refreshing black tea with lychee, and sat in our knock-off ikea bendy chair, and now feel a lot more human.

I am still not ‘entirely’ well, and this is reflected in the feeling of my peripheral vision closing in and generally feeling floaty as I did all day today; which made looking after the really, really sick person with the fairly uncommon and totally unexpected diagnosis a bit more of a challenge than normal. Quite honestly, I can say I’m awfully glad that I updated his obs chart when I did, because while his observations had only deteriorated a little since I’d taken over his care, the trend that became apparent when I sat and charted them shortly after his consultant review made me sit up and take notice. And monitor him more closely. And then ring the medical team 15 minutes later with a phrase that you don’t really want to come out of my mouth.

“Did you see Mr X?”
“Yep…”
“Err, he’s become quite poorly….”

When I start a request for a review with the comment that I think they’re poorly, that means they probably are really quite unwell. Understatement tends to be my mark**, so ‘quite poorly’ is never a good sign.

And so it was.

And so he was transferred to a hospital at which I’ll shortly be working. Where they have posher surgeons who can fix what ails him. We hope. He apparently has a 3/4 chance of survival, which isn’t so…bad.

* I now have instructions. A handy PDF of the original BSA service sheets. But no time. Argh. I also have brake blocks, which I may go and treat myself by fitting now.
** Although I have resorted to blunt truth on occasionally, the one that springs to mind is dealing with a particularly obstructive obs & gynae registrar (not in this trust) who didn’t seem to grasp that someone exsanguinating from a vaginal bleed would be their speciality whether or not she was pregnant, and that right at that moment, as we had the consultant and two ED registrars, and another nurse desperately trying to keep her alive long enough that he might get to see her, no, they would not be coming to chat with him, he needed to get his lazy arse into the ED now, please, and maybe, if he was lucky, we might have sorted out a pregnancy test by the time he arrived, but only if she was still alive and we’d sprouted more limbs.

So, as with most things at the moment, last year’s review is a bit behind schedule. I had a bit of a stressful morning for reasons which I expect I’ll go into at some point, but not right now, and am endeavouring to unwind by looking at last year – which given the insane stressyness I recall from last year is, perhaps, unlikely to be the most positive thing! However, after this I’m going to put what is, I hope, the final coat of paint on the ceiling upstairs – which should mean that I can start painting the corridor downstairs. That will bring the finishing of the house closer…

…all of which tells you how long it is since I started this. It’s been in draft for a while, and I quickly finished off the year to get it up online. I actually had a lovely morning with this little fellow,

who I’m looking after for my friends.

Anyhow, so 2011.
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