There have been cheaper days that have gone more smoothly

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Seriously now, today sucked.

Which is a shame, because it started so well. I relaxed, watched the episode of Dr Who I’d missed while muching on some nice cereal. I had a moderately pleasant shower, at least by my limited standards, flew into town to get my mom’s card, bought petrol, found the ideal card, got home, ate lunch, got changed and headed out into the sunshine. I flew down the motorway, ’twas like the Viva had wings.

Seriously, he flew.

And then, 2/3rds of a mile from my junction I lost power. The engine didn’t *die*, not outright. Just wouldn’t rev. I dashed indicator lights blazing for the hard shoulder. I assumed that this was another instance of ‘I’ve got very hot and I’m now unhappy’. I sat. We retried. After a while we’d got to ‘idle’ but as soon as I put my foot on the accelerator the engine died.

Eventually I had to join the RAC – after admitting defeat. An hour and 15 minutes later they turned up (oh, I’m so impressed *sigh*); on the plus side the guy who turned up used to work for a Vauxhall Dealer. Indeed, he used to service Vivas, and so got right down to stripping the carb there and then at the side of the road.

And there it was, inside the carb. The main jet – that which controls petrol flow to the engine, it was sat – having unscrewed itself – inside the body of the carb. He put it back, and off I went. I am impressed. I’d’ve been altogether more impressed if he’d’ve remembered to put the choke-cable-retaining-clip back on; because, well, I had to do that. When I left work. And the car wouldn’t run right. Fortunately it was still sat on top of the battery (christ knows how, I guess I have some luck). It’s still not quite running right, I suspect I’ve not got the cable in quite the right place, but I was clamping it using my neuro-obs-torch gripped twixt my teeth, in the dark.

*sighs*

It cost me 100 quid though. That’s 500. 500 quid would nearly have reconditioned the engine on Rebecca. I keep having to remind myself that there’s other jobs in that engine bay that need doing, but it’s hard. Hard not to think that I made a stupid, wrong decision buying Brick. Though he’s actually worked out pretty well, and tolerated  the switch from barely used to daily driver with only moderate trauma.

Anyway, that got me down, but the death of another patient at work, that got me down more. Her husband was clearly very devoted, and they were obviously still very much in love. I know that you have to risk your heart if you’re going to get to experience all that there is in this life. But it was heart-rending watching him come in; too late to be with her when she died.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember the ones we save.

i’ve also started to feel a little down, there’ve not been any new exciting emergency jobs on nhs-jobs, and I got nothing, not even an interview from any of my applications. I don’t entirely know what to do about it, A&E is always oversubscribed, but I feel my future plans slipping. I always hated having plans, because I never was any good at making them work, and it was always so stressful when they didn’t. And now I remember why.

But I want to work in the ED, it’s really something that makes my day brighter, I love it. I love it with all my heart. And whilst I enjoy care of the older person – or at least the ward I work on with it’s generally cheery staff and fantastic team – it’s not what I want to do with my life.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.