So yesterday was another challenging day at work; I had two nurses I was ‘working with’; both of whom had different agendas – which culminated in lots of things not getting done, or being done too late. It’s impossible to prioritise when two people give you conflicting directions; and frustrating when they both tell you to do the same thing (separately). Although it’s fun when you get to say “I’ve done that already”.
Still.
It made the shift drag a bit, but the ward is one of these busy ones – especially with one patient who was confused, violent and wandering (he made it as far as the main exit to the hospital where he was stopped by security; it’s lucky he’s confused, otherwise he might have noticed there was an exit in our building – and he’d probably not have been stopped). He’d poked a nurse in the eye (who’d not even met him yet); kicked another one and thrown a punch at another. Still, with me I just backed away whenever I saw the very early signs of aggression kicking in, and seemed to get away with it.
One of the things I have noticed is my memory improving. For years I’ve had the worst memory – I’ve been one of those people who’d often walk to a room and stand there looking like a pillock trying to work out what I was doing. Now I’m finding that I’m remembering more – and it’s spread to my personal life. I feel much more organised, ‘cos I’m not so dopey about what I need to remember to do (of course, buidling the hackintosh was a prime example of that not being true as I went up and down the stairs discovering things I’d not thought to bring down to where I was building it).
It’s good though, although I still have my moments. Half way up an old nightingale ward, having walked from the other end of the ward, I remembered exactly who it was I’d wanted to another set of obs on, necessitating a quick turn around mid-walk and walking back down the ward with the obs machine I’d just taken in the other direction.
But the list is staying in my head, which is good.
And last night, despite the rain I had a really nice ride home. Despite for the third ride in a row someone attempting to drive through me (they were in the Left turn only lane, and decided to go straight on, despite the fact I was there. I’ve now managed to get used to the different position of the horn on the later switch block, only because I’ve needed it so many times). I’m also getting used to riding through really heavy traffic again – people seemingly unaware of what a box junction is. That bugs me, it’s not complex. If you can’t clear the box then you can’t enter it. STOP QUEUING ACROSS MY FRACKING EXIT YOU DUMBASS. Still, I can wiggle the bike through most spaces. Of course, the rain last night probably didn’t do the boxes I was bringing home a lot of good, I’ll go look later. After lunch I need to do a mass-mailout of stuff.
The job situation is now reaching ‘taking the piss’; the occupational health department have stated that they’ve not got enough information on my latex allergy. I’m not *actually* allergic to bloody latex, I’m allergic to the accelerants used to make latex gloves; and even then only very slightly. I get itchy / red skin if I wear the gloves. That’s it. So I don’t. That’s the precautions they gave me, but it says on the print out I sent them “see comments”. I bet the comments are “contacted Ms Elliott and explained precautions over the telephone” – but because it said “see comments” and the comments weren’t included they want the comments. I am *never* going to get moved before the holiday.
No way.
So I guess I’ll be moving stuff into my mum’s garage. Which means explaining to my mum the presence of an Electric Guitar. And what looks like 3 motorbikes (there’s only 2 really, it’s an optical illusion). And of course, no internet. I don’t know how to speed this up. I am beginning to begrudge saying anything. In fact, I’m beginning to begrudge telling occy health in the first place, because otherwise I could just have turned up and gone ‘oh, I seem to have got a latex allergy’.
