Happy Christmas!

I am going to stay back with my parents in Liverpool from tomorrow, and not sure whether I'll have time to blog, so just wanted to wish everyone who reads this blog a very happy, peaceful and blessed Christmas. Hope you find some time amongst the manic-ness and consumption-fest to spend with somebody you love and think about the real Meaning of christmas. love doctor/woman xxx

The Pedestal

I have had one of those periods of my life where my insecurities surface more than usual recently, for various reasons, and one of them reared its ugly head the other night when stressing to mr me at about 1am when we were in bed. This insecurity is one of the worst things about being a doctor.

Rightly or wrongly, when you tell people you are a doctor, they have a certain reaction. Normally it involves the word "wow!", and there is instantly a certain mystique about you that wasn't there before. You have seen babies born, you have seen people die, you have (hopefully) stopped a few people dying, and most people place their trust in the integrity and competence of their doctors. So they suddenly look at you in a slightly different way. Being me, I normally say "I'm a doctor," in a slightly apologetic way, as if to say, "please don't look at me differently" (although I notice I have recently started introducing myself as a doctor, instead of a junior doctor. So maybe I am getting slightly less self-deprecating)

I am getting more able to live with the pedestal that people put me on. Perhaps too much so - sometimes I try to imagine how I would feel if I wasn't a doctor any more, and I realise that I am slowly depending more and more on my career for my sense of self. I am well aware that pride lies that way, and I attempt to "consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." (Phillipians 3:8) I know that I need to work more with God on finding my sense of identity in Him and not in the things I have or am here in this world.What I still find very hard to live with is the nagging fear that one day I am going to fall off the pedestal.

Medicine is a lot about the way you present your knowledge. E.g. you have a young female patient with a chest pain which sometimes occurs at rest, on breathing in, then goes away again after a few minutes. You ask a few questions and it sounds like a chest pain related to anxiety. That is your diagnosis. You know that there is probably a tiny percentage chance that it is something else. But the risk calculator instilled into your brain by practice is telling you that this tiny risk is not worth investigating for. Do you tell the patient all this? No. She is already anxious, you don't want to make her more anxious. So you tell her in your best reassuring manner to try a few simple measures to reduce her stress and that the pain is nothing serious. To safety net you maybe ask her to come back if things don't improve. For the patient to go away happy and to get better, you need to come accross confident. This "bedside manner" that doctors have to have can sometimes feel like an act. You are taking on the anxiety, so that the patient can stop thinking she is ill. But the general public often seem not to understand that the art of diagnosis is, by it's very nature, a sophisticated type of educated guessing. In many cases there will be some uncertainty. But if your educated guess later proves to be wrong, the patient may forever think you are a bad doctor, even if 9 out of 10 colleagues would have done the same thing.

Then there is the question of knowledge. The volume of medical knowledge is vast. It covers all diseases from prematurity to senility, and from every system of the human body. It is almost impossible for one person to know it all. Especially with some of the questions I get asked in my day to day life, eg "why does my tongue hurt when I drink pineapple juice?" or "is it usual for one twin to be left handed and one twin to be right handed?" But if a patient, or worse, an aquaintance who is asking you medical questions, suddenly finds that you don't know the answer, sometimes they look at you like their world is tumbling around their ears. Because doctors know everything.

Maybe some doctors know everything. Gregory House, for example - he knows everything, and that is very lucky, because he has the most statistically improbable caseload of conditions I've ever seen. I have met a few who seem to remember every footnote from medical school. But the vast majority of doctors know about the conditions we see every day in our chosen field, and for the rest we depend on remembering some of the information, knowing where to find the rest of it, and recognising when to refer to somebody else.

I find it very hard to be under the constant pressure of being expected to be some higher form of human being, who never gets things wrong or doesn't know the answer. It doesn't help that I am naturally rather ditsy, and tend to bump into things a lot. Sometimes I can see people looking at me thinking "well, at least she's not a surgeon!" after I have done something particularly dyspraxic. I am getting better at coming across confident and all-knowing at work, but in my day-to-day life, it's just not me. I'm too honest to pretend I know all the answers all the time. Sometimes I love to be somewhere where nobody knows what I do, and I'm just a girl, just another person on the street. I also regularly fantasise about being a housewife, and not bearing this responsibility that sometimes seems so heavy.

I am well aware that I tend to live my life far too much through other people's eyes, and worry constantly about what others think of me. I think for this reason I feel these pressures more than many of my colleagues. I am also aware that a lot of what I'm describing may well be me projecting my own insecurities onto others, and imagining they are mentally criticising me when in fact they are doing nothing of the kind. I don't think it helped that in my first few years of medical school, my housemates were constantly commenting "I can't believe you are going to be a doctor, you're so dozy/clumsy/I can't believe you're going to skip a lecture!" etc. I know that I am a bit scatty, always have been, and this is something I have to fight daily in order to make sure I practice safely by staying organised. I never go beyond the reach of my competence, and I am honest with patients about this. Maybe if I can deal with my inner critic, I can start to let the rest of the world think what it likes about me.

A very merry weekend

After a hideously busy week on the postnatal ward in which I didn't manage to wake up on time one single morning, I had a lovely Christmassy weekend, despite the foul weather. On Friday night mr me had told me we were going out for the evening, which would be my Christmas present. He took me to see the Northern Ballet Theatre performing the Nutcracker, which I loved, and was very seasonal and beautiful, and I have been doing random bits of ballet ever since. It was very special that he went with me as well, since he has about as much interest in ballet as I have in cricket. His parents also came to stay the weekend, so on Saturday we went to get our tree from Whiteley's, a garden centre, which was basically a huge land of Christmas decorations. We spent the evening in decorating the tree, drinking mulled wine and eating popcorn and watching a film. Then on Sunday evening we had our church Christmas party, which was pretty good fun - we had a rip-off X-factor competition, and it is surprising how many talented singers and songwriters are hanging around in our church. It was a lovely weekend and I think I needed it to relax in. I didn't get much work done, but I've done 200 MCQ questions this evening, so I feel a bit more in control of that now.

More New York pictures

misc

ok, so last night was not good. i had a bit of a brain mist and all the ward patients decided to get sick, mostly struggling to breathe, which tends to scare me. tonight so far is going a bit better following a shaky start.

at the moment i feel stressed. there are various reasons, but the most significant is that the GP training scheme i am on and have been for the last 2 years, has introduced a new system which involves jumping through a lot more hoops, most of them electronic assessments. i was managing to cope i thought, but discovered 2 days ago that i have to jump through a whole load of them before next Friday. which is not so easy to do when you're on nights. think this saturday might be devoted to studying and preparing for meetings, which is a bit sad. maybe i will manage some gardening or shopping as well.

in the morning i am going with mr me to pick up a van and then we are driving (or rather he is driving, i am sleeping in the passenger seat) to my parents' house in liverpool to pick up some furniture. it's an antique walnut veneer dressing table and mini wardrobe that i used to have in my bedroom throughout my childhood, and loved. we will put them in our (finally) redecorated bedroom and when we buy a new bed, we can move in there. i am so looking forward to having a dressing table again - at the moment my unnecessarily large collection of toiletries lives on top of a chest of drawers in the fitted wardrobe, and gets knocked around by the clothes hanging above it. i am temporarily obsessed by curtains bedding and lamps for the new room.

i miss my church. due to work, new york and visiting home, i've only been able to go one out of the last five sundays. it definitely has an impact on my state of mind. i start to feel isolated from friends, and more importantly, it affects my prayer life and relationship with God, which has a knock on effect on my general mental wellbeing.

i am looking forward to christmas, as i always do - i am a total child about loving christmas, but am slightly sad that i will need to revise for professional exams in january over the holidays. i have been quite efficient with my christmas shopping this year and have most of it done already.

i feel my brain needs a good clear out and i need some focus and organisation in my life. i feel like i'm writing myself a horoscope here. anyway, i shall go and attempt to tidy my brain.

sorry about the lack of capital letters. i'm not in the mood for them tonight.

daysleeper

I cried the other night
I can't even say why
Fluorescent flat caffeine lights
Its furious balancing
I'm the screen, the blinding light
I'm the screen, I work at night
I see today with a newsprint fray
My night is colored headache grey
Don't wake me with so much
Don't wake me with so much.
TheOcean machine is set to 9
I'll squeeze into heaven and valentine
My bed is pulling me,Gravity
Daysleeper, daysleeper

REM

gravity pulling me down to sleep but i must keep going. plan gone from brain, too late for thinking. some time i must sort things out...some time. leg burning again must rest. life whizzes by without me as i wade through treacle. everywhere smells bad. when will this be over then i will rest and also do everything i need to do at the same time.

falling in love with a skyline

So I think I've recovered enough from jet-lag, post-holiday stupor and complete inability to choose between which photos to post, to tell you a little bit about my trip to New York. I fell for Manhattan completely. I have the symptoms I used to get with a new infatuation with somebody - everything reminds me of them, a song, a movie, an image. Except that being New York, everything actually does remind me of it, because it is everywhere in movies, songs and imagery. The thing I loved most about it was the way you could be just walking along the street, watching your footing or looking in a shop window, when suddenly you'd look up and see this breathtaking skyline. From every angle and in every light it would look different, but it was beautiful in a way I hadn't really thought a city could be.


I travelled with a friend, C, who I've known the last 5 years at church. She shares with me a slightly irreverent sense of humour (important to have in church friends), and an ability to get excited about simple things. Like pancakes for breakfast, yellow cabs, rude joggers, cool pyjamas, seeing a spot from a film, every time we saw the Empire State Building, getting our makeup done at Bloomingdales, posing for stupid photos, getting dressed up... The list could go on. We were over-excited about everything, and kept making a new plan to fit everything into our days.

We shopped til we almost literally dropped in Macy's, Bloomies, Tiffanys, Victorias Secret, Abercrombie and Fitch, and cool little vintage and boutique-y type shops. We went out to see Les Miserables on Broadway, to 55 Bar in the Village, where we listened to live jazz and pretended we were cool, we saw a bit of the Halloween Parade, and a bit of the marathon going past. We saw a lot of the obvious sights - the Empire State, the Statue of Liberty, Grand Central Station, the Rockefeller Centre, the Brooklyn Bridge and a few of the less obvious ones, like the original Winnie-the-Pooh, the reading room at the New York Public Library, the Strawberry Fields garden for John Lennon, and the Guggenheim.

Some of the most memorable moments were just from seeing people living their normal lives, like stumbling across a kid's ice hockey game, overhearing couples arguing or walkers swearing at joggers in an uninhibited New York way, chatting to taxi drivers, watching a wheelchair athlete repair his bent wheel in the middle of the marathon or watching a family take a photo shoot of their kid on the Alice in Wonderland statue in the park.







I can't wait to go back and see the things we didn't manage to do. I'd like to go with mr me and see things in a different way. It was lovely to have a girly holiday, and shop without feeling guilty and annoying, and watch Breakfast at Tiffany's and When Harry met Sally as research, and get unreasonably excited about everything. But it's always wonderful to come home.

Nothingishness

I am struggling at the moment with this blog. I seem to only blog when I am doing nights. I also seem to spend a lot of time feeling melancholy when I'm on nights. Somehow I see the negative side of everything. Eg going to New York with a girlfriend is no longer an exciting adventure, but scarey and selfish, because I haven't been away without mr me abroad since we got married. When I finish nights tomorrow morning I will probably become suddenly euphoric - that is what normally happens.

I think I've also not been blogging much because I've had a bout of sciatica, and sitting on hard chairs at computers seemed to be particularly bad for it. It's feeling much better now, but I am starting to feel a little old with all the aches and pains I've had recently.

Life seems very busy at the moment. There seem to be a million things on my jobs list, which I am constantly revisiting in an attempt to feel in control of it. A lot of things are admin to do with my training scheme, and my MRCGP exams are starting to loom large on the horizons of my thought. I haven't had to seriously revise for anything since my finals, and it is a bit of a psychological barrier.

So this is a grumbly post! I apologise, and shall stop now, and go take a little rest before baby checks at 6.30am. Tonight is the night the clocks go back, so my 12 1/2 hour shift is 13 1/2 hours instead. I think this may be affecting my outlook a little.

Exciting things about Autumn

Here is a cheery post to distract myself from the fact that I'm on nights again with a nasty cold. I love autumn. I was going to say it was my favourite season, which I think every autumn, but then every spring I think that is my favourite season as well, so it's hard to say.

• Autumn is a season of anticipation. There's a certain tang in the air, of bonfire smoke and crispy leaves, and frost to come that makes me think, "Bonfire night is coming/ cosy evenings are coming/ Christmas is coming!"

• Strictly come dancing is back on! I am deeply and worryingly obsessed with this. Generally I don't go in for celebrity/reality TV programmes, but I think this is the perfect Saturday night TV show. Of course, I've always loved dancing, so that's most of the attraction, but I also love the dresses, the drama, the glamour and watching someone fall in love with dancing. It seems to have slightly more value for me than things like "I'm a Celebrity", because the contestants are genuinely learning a skill that is difficult and rewarding, rather than just solely trying to revive their faltering careers (although a lot of them are doing that too.) Me and my sister are both into it, so get together and watch it at the weekend. Good excuse for a night in with a glass of wine.

• I'm going to New York at the end of the month. Another thing to anticipate this year. Am planning to morph miraculously into a glamourous Carrie-Bradshaw type person and wander the streets of Manhattan in high heels which will not hurt me at all, looking wistful and thinking profound thoughts. Or at least I am planning to do lots of shopping, sightseeing and have lots of fun.

• Winter coats! I love the day when I decide I need my winter coat out for the first time. It makes me feel dressed up, but wrapped up.

• Bright, frosty, clear blue mornings when the trees are golden, and the air bites. Preferably on a day when I can go for a long walk followed by a hot chocolate somewhere warm.

Pale and Interesting

As someone born with naturally fair and easily burnt skin, I have always tried to be careful not to burn (except for a brief and foolish teenage flirtation with sunbathing). When my dad, who is originally from Ireland, and has the same skin type as me, was diagnosed with the most aggressive form of skin cancer (thankfully at an early stage), three and a half years ago, I became even more careful, and tried to stay out of the sun and protect myself properly.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend last week. Her father-in-law has recently been diagnosed with the same type of cancer, melanoma, but unfortunately his had already spread. Her mother in law told her to, "promise me you'll celebrate your fair skin, and give up on trying to have a tan." These words struck me, and made me think of the strange change in Western attitudes towards skin shade that happened some time during the last century. I have achieved a state of being comfortable in my own skin, at least the colour of it, in recent years, but I remember being bitterly humiliated as a teenager, when people would call me "milk-bottle legs".

According to Wikipedia, the trend for tanning in the 20th century was originally started by Coco Chanel in the South of France in the 1920s, when she accidentally tanned. Prior to this, having fair, pale skin was a sign of beauty and status, because it meant you were rich enough that you didn't have to do manual labour. After this, having a tan became a sign of beauty and status, because it meant you were rich enough to afford expensive holidays abroad. Interestingly, melanoma is the only cancer where rates are higher in social class I than social class V. In many cultures today, particularly in India, fair is still considered beautiful and skin lightening creams sell like fake tan does in England.

Anyway, I thought for the sake of my friend, and anyone else still struggling to come to terms with pale skin, I would create a small celebration of beautiful pale complexions. And these women are not just beautiful, they are interesting. They have something to say for themselves.

"I prefer a man who leaves and gives expensive jewels." Satine, Moulin Rouge














"Perhaps I didn't always love him as well as I do now. But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable." Elizabeth Bennet, Pride and Prejudice






"I will cleave to you Dunadan, and turn from the twilight. But there lies the land of my people and the long home of my kin." Arwen, Lord of the Rings






Don't tan! Wear sunscreen!

my day out

I am currently enjoying (or when not ranting about the Inland Revenue, I'm enjoying) two weeks off, which are built into my rota after nights. Last week I went straight down to London following my night shift, to see a friend who needed some moral support the night before a professional exam, for various reasons. Also stayed with some other friends, and then spend a couple of days with my Grandpa in Hertfordshire. In the midst of all this visiting, I ended up with a daytime on my own in the capital, with no-one to see and nothing to do except enjoy myself. I enjoyed wandering around anonymously - I have a special weakness for that feeling of freedom that comes when nobody in the world knows exactly where you are and what you are doing. I had that feeling quite a lot during my year in halls, but not really much before or since. Of course I wouldn't like it if it happened all the time...

I was staying near the British Museum, so went to take a look at all the art and statues we have pinched from around the world. I was one day too early for the Terracota Army, but I've never seen the rest of the museum, so I spent a happy morning looking at mummies, sarcophagi, Greek gods and venetian clocks. I ate lunch at an outside table in a cafe in Russell Square Gardens, enjoying the sunlight scattered through the trees, and trying to look glamourous and sophisticated. Then I spent the afternoon at Camden Market being tempted by hand-painted masquerade type masks, Pashminas from Kashmir and Japanese T-shirts. In the end I resisted and just bought a vintage T shirt for mr me, and a lovely cup of chai rooibos tea for me. It was a good day. Sometimes it's good to be a tourist; sometimes it's good to be alone.

What I hate most about being a grown-up

Forms. Admin. The general hassle and stress that can be generated by pieces of paper.

Grrrr. Have just spent most of the afternoon searching through bank statements, cheque book stubs and P60s to ensure I had all the right figures to fill out my tax return online. Turns out I was missing just one - my UTR, which is a reference number they give you when they ask you to do the tax return. In fact they didn't ask me to do one, but I wanted to for various reasons, including having 3 different employers during the last tax year, who paid and taxed me at different rates, and because I'd recieved some untaxed income from report fees etc. You would have thought the Inland Revenue would be happy to hear from honest people like me who self-refer. But no, very suspicious behaviour. "why do you want to fill in a tax return?" Perhaps they suspect what I suspect - that they owe me more than I owe them. Now it turns out I may not get the essential bit of information until after the deadline where you have to work everything out yourself. This would be very Bad News given my poor head for finance. And what my dad would say to me when I asked him to help me. I suspect he might feel that i had left things a little too late. But I maintain it's all Their Fault. These are the moments when I wish I was a kid again, and my financial calculations involved mostly wondering how long it would be before I could afford another Sylvanian family.

Best Moments #2

When I did a post on Best Moments #1 (trying to describe in detail one of the best moments of my life), mr me got a little upset that it didn't involve him. I had to explain that it was not of course my number one best moment of all time, but just the first one that I decided to describe. So I thought when trying another, it had better be one involving him. It is hard to choose from the very many beautiful and sometimes unbearably happy moments I have shared with him, even when I've excluded those that aren't really describable in public. So I decided to start with the first one ever. It is nearly 10 years ago now, which is very scarey!


I am walking the streets of Liverpool at night and the snow is falling gently. I am with mr me, but he is not mr me yet, not even my boyfriend, I have held a proper conversation with him today for the first time. It is April 1998 and we have come out of the cinema with my best friend and her then boyfriend to find it snowing totally out of the blue, so to speak. We have missed the last bus from our bus stop and had to walk more than a mile to the next. It is not a part of town we know well, and we are all enchanted to come across a snowy church and green. Our companions keep falling behind snogging and we are walking on ahead talking, and innocently amazed to find ourselves so in harmony about everything we talk of and our delight in the unexpected weather. It is not something I am used to - to talk to a boy like this, to click with him, to have him pay me tiny compliments. It has never happened to me in quite this way before. I am intoxicated and we walk on in our magical snowy world, in a glass snow dome bubble, outside of normal space and time.

Nights

I haven't done proper night shifts for a whole year before this week. I did on calls in psychiatry, but they were 24 hour proper on calls that I did from home. There is a current shift from the previous pattern of doing 7 nights in a row of 12 hour shifts to splitting the week into a block of 4 and of 3 nights, which I think is much better, but the many things I hate, and few things I like about doing nights are coming back to me vividly.

I hate

• the constant nausea. especially when dealing with vomit, or the gunk on newborn babies, which was making me feel nauseous last night
• the loneliness. as a junior doctor at night, you are pretty much a lone ranger, you have a registrar, but often they go to bed, or in the case of this job, are busy on the neonatal unit. then there are the nurses, but often they are busy talking about things I don't understand, like off-duty. tonight they are having a bit of a rant about ward meetings and time owing. i don't blame them, but i cant' really join in. then i get home alone in the morning, and only see mr me when i wake up.
• the way my brain stops working. always disconcerting when mistakes are potentially serious. last night i mislabelled a blood bottle and mishandled my jobs list. tonight i feel a bit better because i slept during the day.
• the headaches, bowel disturbances, puffy eyes and general confusion about what day it is.
• the way i eat carbs constantly and put on lots of weight.
• the way i fall completely out of social circulation.
• the emotional lability. difficult patients, making mistakes, getting shouted at, death, extreme busyness can all become overwhelming. last night i cried just because i saw a baby born.
• waking up to find all the daylight hours have gone, i still feel rubbish, i have no awareness that any time has passed since i fell asleep, and i have to go to work in 2 hours. i know i shouldn't complain about this because a lot of people struggle to sleep during the day, but it is a bit depressing to find that the day has just vanished.

I quite like

• the random bits of time that i get to myself, for example the daytime before i start nights. i can't do anything too energetic, normally end up sleeping in and then pottering around sorting a few things out, but it is a kind of peaceful day.
• feeling useful. things you get called to on nights are more likely to be essential e.g. sick patients or deliveries. (doesn't always apply!)
• being able to say "that's a routine job, it can be sorted out in the daytime"
• learning. it's always a good time for learning because you are more likely to have to manage sick patients on your own, or do procedures. unfortunately the tiredness means i am quite likely to forget it again.
• feeling a bit special. always good for a bit of sympathy. you get excused from most daily tasks.
• having spare time to blog at work!

There seem to be quite a few things i like here, but this is misleading. The day in 6 months' time when I don't have to do nights any more will be a very happy day.

Why I love living here

Sweetpea

I started paediatrics last Wednesday, and today was my first day working on the neonatal ward. The SHO mostly works doing baby checks for the one day old babies - making sure there are no abnormalities. I also have to attend delivery suite for all caesarian sections and deliveries where there is risk to the baby or foetal distress. Fortunately at the moment, a registrar is coming with me to the deliveries and teaching me how to resuscitate babies. But the babies are so beautiful!!! When you check for a cleft palate you put your little finger in the mouth. I felt very moved when one little baby started sucking on my finger. I am going to have to watch myself in this job, or I won't make it to the end of my training scheme! The registrar who is teaching me keeps calling all the babies and children "sweetpea", which I also think is very cute. That was it really. Extreme cuteness. Just wanted to share.

Disconnected things

I have a sore throat. I hope I am not getting ill.
My in-laws have been over today and we had a nice time. My mother-in-law was unable to stay out of the garden, so between us we got it tidied up quite a lot.
I am a bit worried about starting paediatrics on Wed. Haven't done any acute hospital medicine since this time last year.
I am currently on call, but haven't been called all day.
I was grumpy with mr me today for no particular reason.
My colleague who has become my friend is leaving Yorkshire tomorrow to take up a new post in the South. I will miss her lots.
The blind at the window is making my eyes go funny with its stripes.
Seeing pictures of myself on facebook keeps making me realise how much weight I have gained over the last couple of years.
Last weekend the friend that I secretly slightly idolise because of her willowy blonde-haired classic beauty got married to a soldier in uniform. It was a picture perfect wedding.
I have really enjoyed the friendships I have made in psychiatry. Felt that the people there were less driven, competitive, materialistic than a lot of doctors are.
I miss my mum a bit.
I am looking forward to the autumn. I hope it is a proper autumn and doesn't just continue to be wet.
I really have to go to bed.

this is me

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

More books!

Felt it about time to update my reading list. Have just got back from our church conference in Brighton, which was amazing, and my grandpa's 90th party, which was fun, but can't be bothered to describe these just now. Harry Potter mania is taking over my life, as I try to read the first 6 books in 2 weeks in preparation for the new one, so books are more or less all I can think about right now. So since I last blogged about books, I have read:

So Many Ways to Begin, Jon McGregor - I think this book suffered because I was comparing it to his first one, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, which I raved about before, I think. It is the story of a marriage and of 2 people's lives and also the search of the husband for his real mother. It shared the same immediacy of writing as the previous book, which draws people and their actions so clearly that I could see them, but it doesn't have quite the same poetic feel and so many intertwining stories. Still enjoyed it though.

The Bookseller of Kabul, Anne Seierstad- I found this book interesting, but was not blown away by it. It is a true description of an Afghan family that the author lived with for a while. It does give an insight into family life and the way people think, but I don't feel it changed my life much.

Blue like Jazz, Donald Miller - this is a fascinating, honest and funny account of one young man's journey towards true Christianity (or as he prefers to call it, Christian spirituality), in a postmodern world. He looks at topics like community, people's perceptions of Christians, sex and singleness, the mix of politics and religion in America, in such a simple, down to earth, what-we've-all-been-thinking-but-were-too-afraid-to-say kind of way, that I couldn't put it down. He also includes cartoons, and his hallucinations of Emily Dickinson. I'd recommend it to Christians or anyone who's interested in Christianity.

The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (R) - I re-read the whole series. Genius taking of a silly idea and stretching it to the point of lunacy and hilarity. I am an old fashioned happy ending lover though, and can't help preferring the end to "So long and thanks for all the fish" to the ultimate end of "Mostly Harmless".

The Undomestic Goddess and the Shopaholic books, Sophie Kinsela - Ok, so I don't normally read this type of book, but I borrowed one while having a bath at my sister's house (long story, I only have a shower in my house at the mo, and I need my baths), and found it unputdownable. They are very light and did not enlighten me in any particular way, but they entertained me a lot and were readable in about 2 hours each. I thought maybe I had been converted to chick-lit, but then I borrowed...

Watermelon, Marian Keyes - this was dull.

The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins (R) - the earliest English detective novel. The story of a cursed diamond which is left to a young girl on her 21st birthday by her dastardly uncle and the consequences when it is stolen the next day. Still gripping even though I've read it lots of times, atmospheric and spooky.

The Pull of the Moon, Elizabeth Berg- this was one I picked up almost totally at random in the Oxfam bookshop, and was intrigued by the synopsis of the story. It's a bit of a feminist treatise - middle aged woman leaves husband and goes off driving around America, discovers her cervix and sense of self etc, but I found it quite moving and it struck true with me as the inner world of a woman.

Doctor at Large, Richard Gordon - this is a random old book I also picked up in the same trip. It's a James Herriot type true but probably over-embellished account of the author's first few years as a qualified doctor in the first days of the NHS. He struggles to find a job, a car, to look the part, to get on with his seniors and to sleep with nurses without having to marry them. Found it fascinating just because of the contrasts and similarities to today.

The Once and Future King, T H White (R) - I love this book. It's a retelling of the Arthurian legends, mostly sourced directly from the Morte d'Arthur by Malory, but retold in a vastly human, comic, tragic, grotesque, sympathetic, historically accurate and wildly inaccurate way. Please read it.

Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton (R) - Ditto - also brilliant, also please read it. This is a story of an old priest in South Africa in the days before true apartheid came in. He goes to Johannesburg in search of his sister and his son, who went there and never came back... It is about racism, but also about industrialisation, justice, loss of community and forgiveness. And it's beautifully written and will make you cry.

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith (R) - this is a gripping story of a young girl living in an old castle with her eccentric family and her attempts to escape upper-class poverty and find true love. Vividly evokes an imaginative adolescence.

Friday's Child, Georgette Heyer - Ok, so Georgette Heyer is chick-lit that I was already into, but it's all set in the Regency period, which makes it feel slightly more intellectually acceptable. They are generally your classic rom-com type plots with lots of balls, dresses, horses, scandals and elopements thrown in. The characterisation is generally very funny and they always make me feel good. Say what you like - I don't care!

Life isn't all ha ha hee hee, Meera Syal - a bit soap opera-like, but also a good insight into what it's like to be an indian british woman.

Harry Potter 1,2 and 3, JK Rowling (R) - I am racing through them, but also picking up tiny details I haven't noticed before in my attempts to work out what's going to happen in the last book. I'm so excited! My sister has borrowed book 4 and I'm sitting up waiting for her to drop it back to me...

if i can

It's been another one of those days. Those days when I go through the whole of my time at work without once remembering my true motivations for actually being there. (I'm being very honest with myself here). I seem to spend so much of my time working for my pay-cheque, for my career, for the goal of going part-time, to get the nurses or the managers or the patient's family off my back, for the prestige of being a doctor, to impress my consultant or help my colleagues, to learn, or on my worst days, just to get to the end of the day.

In fact, none of these reasons are enough to do the job I do. My primary reasons for working are - corny as it sounds - to help people who are ill, and to work to the best of my ability to give glory to God. The moments that I love my job are the ones when I suddenly feel that I am really connecting with a patient, whether that's because somehow the advice or medication or treatment that I am giving is helping, or, more often, because they feel someone is listening and understanding their pain.

On days when I am in danger of forgetting all about the real reason I am there because I am bogged down with all the other rubbish that comes with working in the NHS, sometimes this poem helps me.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Emily Dickinson

Ok, so maybe the end is more appropriate for an RSPB worker, but the rest of it fits for me. I hope maybe it helps you too.

a rest in the wild country

Mr me and I have returned today from a week in Northumberland with his family - ie his mum and dad, sister and sister's boyfriend. Fortunately I get on very well with the Me's (as they could be called), so except for a nasty cold at the beginning of the week, when I wasn't much company, we had a fun time together. Generally I am very relaxed with them and there's not much I feel I can't say in front of them.

Feel relaxed and chilled out now, but tired, as it seems to have been a surprisingly active week. There were leisure facilities on site, so we swam, trampolined and played tennis, as well as walking, playing beach cricket and horse-riding. All a bit drastic for me! But the peace of the setting and the general desertedness of the county have made me relaxed anyway.


We pottered around castles, wandered among rhodedendrons, marvelled at the steam rising like mist from the nearly empty beach, drank Lindesfarne mead and ate fish and chips by the sea. The horse-riding was very exciting too, as I've never done that before.



One of the best pleasures for me was the bookshop mr me took me to this morning before we came back. It is called Barter Books, it's in Alnwick and it occupies the whole of a redundant Victorian railway station. Apparently it's one of the largest second-hand bookshops in Europe. It has a minature train that travels around the top of the bookcases. It has loads of beautiful old books, folios and early editions. It has tea, coffee and chocolate for 25p a cup and lots of places to sit and enjoy it. I could have spent a week there quite happily. I bought - two tiny old volumes - 2 parts of translations of the story of the Holy Grail from the Morte d'Arthur ( I recently re-read "The Once and Future King", so I'm interested), Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer, Life isn't all ha ha hee hee by Meera Syal, A Passage to India by E M Forster and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. All for less than £20! I have that rich luxurious feeling I always have when I have several new books lined up.

oh, that kind of an evening!

It's the kind of a warm hazy summer evening where it seems almost a desecration not to be in the countryside. The kind of an evening where I long to be lying under a hedgerow by a river, watching the first stars come out and hearing the silence behind the splashing of the water and the gentle song of the birds. It's the kind of an evening when my eyes get misty and I think about a long time ago.

Exciting things about my birthday weekend

• mr me made me a programme (yes, an actual printed programme on pretty paper) of the things we were doing on my birthday. These were all fun things that I like to do.
  

• He bought me exciting breakfast in bed and red roses

• I got very large amounts of birthday money. Grandparents seem to give out more and more money as they get older.

• With this money I got a lovely silver and freshwater pearl necklace and a black wrap dress

• I wore these to go out to Sous Le Nez En Ville, which is a resturant I have heard about ever since moving to Yorkshire, but never been to before (it was as good as they said it was), and then to dance to live soul music at the Wardrobe.

• 5 friends saved my life by helping me prepare food for my barbeque when I was not feeling well enough to do it myself.

• About 30 friends came, bringing much food, and children, and now my garden feels like a proper garden that has been christened.

When I was 25...

Most years around the time of my birthday, I like to record all the new experiences I've had that year. There are normally more than you expect there to be. Well it was my birthday on Saturday, so here goes.

This year I...

...bought my first house

...had my first sick note

...lived in someone's spare room for the first time

...found my first white hairs

...called my first ambulance

...broke my first bone

...started to love gardening

...ran my first GP surgery

...made my first really close friend from another culture

...bought my first wedding hat

...started my first blog!

Drained

I am sitting in my clinic room, having just finished seeing my last patient of the day, and feeling emotionally exhausted and unable to focus on anything at all, so thought I would have a little moan on here before attempting to do my dictation. In fact maybe I will do my dictation tomorrow, as I don't feel up to it really. This is really just a self indulgent grumble, so if that is annoying to you, stop reading now. I've just had a day of difficult patients. I saw my most difficult patient on the ward today, and she just fills me with such anger and guilt by a mystical process psychotherapists like to call "countertransference". By coincidence, I was presenting her case as my presentation to all the other doctors at the lunchtime meeting. I was doing this without the support of my team, who are all away this week, and I felt a bit insecure doing the presentation, as I was the person with least experience in psychiatry. Got some useful input from the other doctors though. Clinic this afternoon over-ran, I had several very distressed patients, one patient turned up stoned, and halfway through I seemed to lose my power of decision making and my ability to listen. Most of the time psychiatry seems like a bit of a holiday because we really don't spend as much time seeing patients as any other speciality, but I think that's necessary, because when you do, it's just so tiring... Think I need to go spend some time gardening. That always straightens me out.

Green and pleasant land?

Working with mostly non-English colleagues for the last 3 months has given me lots of opportunities to look at things from other points of view. The chat in the junior doctors' room ranges from ways to control the world population, to where is best to go on holiday, to council tax and religion. What has struck me most I think is getting a glimpse of what it's like to live in England as a foreigner. This came across particularly forcefully a couple of weeks ago when I went to a barbeque at a colleague's house, and was the only British person there. I had a fun time and people were friendly and chatted to me, but what came across from almost everyone I spoke to was how difficult they found it to live in England. Almost all made some reference, either implicitly or explicitly, to the discrimination they face in getting a job. This is particularly an issue for doctors at the moment. People see this country as a difficult place to survive and a very hard place to get ahead. People have said in my prescence recently, all of these things... "you have to be disciplined to work here", "you have to pay for everything here, everything is taxed", "some are more equal than others", "I have to prove my worth twice as much as an English graduate" etc. A lot of internationals also seem to find it difficult to see the classes of society who see benefits as a way of life. I suppose if you come from a country where the poor starve on the streets to a country where you have to prove your worth at every turn, and then see people living for free, it is difficult.

Certainly all this has made me think a lot more about the country that we live in. Why do our media cover human interest stories obsessively for days? Why do we have to pay a licence fee and a fee on almost everything else that happens on a piece of paper? Why do we pride ourselves on being an inclusive society, when the BNP got 11% of the vote in my local council elections? Why do we enable people who have no desire to work to live in a comfortable house with enough money to run a car as long as they have enough children? Some of these thoughts are not comfortable to me. I admit to normally being a woolly liberal when it comes to benefits, and a little islander when it comes to thinking the British way of doing things must be the best. Of course there are great things about our country and things we should be very proud of. Corruption is minimal compared to a lot of countries, we have freedom of speech and religion and a lot of history behind us. I just hope we don't lose the freedoms and traditions that we have. The thing that struck me most at the barbeque was when a young Nigerian man said to me "The reason that this country is losing its power and greatness is that it has turned its back on faith, which was the source of its strength."

Sleepover!!!

So I can't seem to think of anything intelligent to blog recently - think my brain has been eaten by facebook, which I have recently become dangerously addicted to. (it's great - I've got back in touch with loads of people I'd lost contact with!) I thought I would write a quick post to share my joy in the simple pleasures of the sleepover.

Actually it was more of a girly night in the end than a sleepover, as only one person ended up actually staying, but I think the fact of calling it a sleepover made for a better girly night. we consumed excessive quantities of pizza, chocolate and wine and lemon drizzle cake with strawberries. We chatted, did facemasks with cucumber, did our nails, straightened our hair, listened to the Bridget Jones soundtrack, played a game to see whether anybody could turn round in the bottom of a sleeping bag (no-one could), watched "How to lose a guy in 10 days", giggled and talked about boys until about 3am (or me and the remaining friend did). Also, I love girls - out of the blue, three practical problems that I had chatted to different ones of them about had been sorted for me! How great is that? Unfortunately now I have to go and do the washing up...

football fan

In a break with my normal habits and character, I have watched a full-length football match on the last 2 consecutive evenings. Tuesday night was the cup final of the Yorkshire Christian Football League and Wednesday night I watched Liverpool v Chelsea in the pub (oh dear). Tuesday night definitely more exciting.

This is the first year our church has had a proper football team in a league, and it sometimes seems that mr me and my brother-in-law have talked about little else all year. Mr me is striker and top scorer for the team and my brother in law (or BIL, as I shall call him) is joint manager. The level of obsession could be made clear by a short conversation.

A couple of weeks back mr me stubbed his toe badly on a nail that was sticking up our of our wooden floor.
Half an hour later...
mr me: I'm a bit worried about this toe.
me: Why? What's wrong with it? (visions of toe swollen/ turning black/ falling off)
mr me: I don't know if it's going to affect my play on Saturday...

Anyway, leaving my quibbles and grievances against the team aside, (think I just miss having mr me to myself on saturday mornings), I had a great time watching the game on Tuesday. About half the church turned out to watch them - there must have been about a hundred of us there, compared to about fifteen supporters for the opposition, which made for a great atmosphere. It was a proper ground belonging to a local club, with stands and floodlights and a bar and everything. It was great to have a crowd, and a stand behind us, as it meant we could actually make a proper noise (albiet a rather high-pitched, female-dominated noise). On the few occasions I've been to watch the Saturday morning games there have been 3 or 4 WAGs on the sidelines, occasionally shouting into the wind, but giving up because clearly no-one can hear us. Unfortunately we lost the game 2-0, but everybody played well, and there was no shame in losing to the best team in the division above us really. I enjoyed watching mr me do exciting weave-the-ball-around-the-feet-of-the-defenders things. BIL kindly translated this for me into "when you did get the ball, you beat your man a few times." Tried to encourage him by saying this to him in the car on the way home, but he did seem a bit down. At least playing for the church team seems to have reduced the effect that Liverpool losing has on his mood. Think that having games that he can actually have an influence on has taken away the impact of the learned helplessness of Liverpool games.

5 things you don't know about me

Have been tagged to do this by the adventurous and always interesting Jen.

1. Before I wanted to be a doctor, I wanted to be a farmer (of some idealised organic tiny farm where I got to be friends with all my animals), and then a writer.

2. I am afraid of large crowds where I feel like I can't get out. Rush hour on the trains in Mumbai was my idea of hell. I tell myself this is why I don't go to festivals, but really it's just because I'm not cool enough.

3. Until the recent falling-down-a-hole debacle where I may or may not (probably not) have cracked a rib, I have never broken a bone in my life.

4. Sometimes I do ballet in the corridors when nobody is looking.

5. I was 17 when I had my first kiss, at about 1 in the morning in a car parked at the Prom in Liverpool. It was with mr me.

Making me laugh

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Can't laugh too hard cos it hurts!

doctor/woman fell down a hole...

Yesterday evening, when getting home from work with mr me, I stood on a drain cover on our drive. It was loose and I fell down the hole. Fortunately not all of me fell down because I think I might be more seriously hurt, but my body and one leg went down leaving me suspended between my left arm and right leg on either side of the hole, landing on the left side of my ribs and with one shoe missing. Panicked. Fortunately mr me helped me climb out and got me into the house ignoring the boys who were paused open-mouthed from their game of street football. Then he fed me chocolate and tea and comforted my trembling tearful shock. I was pretty fortunate really - I saw a patient in A+E last year who did a similar thing and fractured his humerus into three pieces. Went to the minor injuries unit for a quick check-up just to be on the safe side, even though I knew what they would say:-

1. your rib may or may not be fractured
2. we don't do x-rays for this because it doesn't alter the management
3. you need to take it easy, take painkillers, take deep breaths
4. if you get short of breath or cough up blood, see a doctor immediately
5. if your rib is fractured the pain will get worse for 3-5 days and may last for up to six weeks

I know all this because I've said it myself a lot of times. Just wanted someone to listen to my chest and prod my back really. The rib that hurts is my left twelfth rib, which is one of the "floating" ribs at the bottom that only connect to the spine, not the sternum, so it's not really hurting to breathe, only to cough and laugh and twist and bend. I was supposed to be on call last night, but called in sick for that and then again this morning. Am actually feeling less stiff, rather than more, today, but do get the occasional sharp twinge. Am starting to get that guilty feeling I always get when I call in sick. I'm not actually dying - what am I doing at home? When I keep still I feel quite comfortable and well. In fact I'm starting to think this whole post is an attempt to justify to myself that I am allowed to be off sick today. Which is ridiculous, so I shall stop it. now.

Easter

Feel a bit short of ideas and inspiration at the moment so can't quite think what to write. Thought would jot down a few random thoughts that occurred to me over Easter. Easter can be a funny holiday sometimes because I feel it's the most important celebration in the Christian calendar, but sometimes it passes by and I hardly seem to notice it, especially if I'm working. Because our church doesn't own its own building and there are a lot of young people in the congregation who tend to go home for the Easter break, there are not normally any extra services at our church for Good Friday or anything. Due to much messing around of my rota at work by HR department, I was at some stages during the week supposed to be working on the Saturday, so we decided to go back to Liverpool (where both our parents live) for the Sunday and Monday, and stuck to the decision even when I wasn't working at the weekend any more.

...On Good Friday I watched a programme on BBC called "Who do you say I am?" which was a meditation and a telling of the Passion story based around works of modern art using the image of the cross by Christian and non-Christian artists. I thought it was a refreshingly good piece of religious programming - not so preachy that it was only watchable by Christians, not deliberately critical for the sake of having a new and controversial approach, but open and asking questions. I found parts of it very moving...

...Decided to go to the local Anglican church for the 2pm service on Good Friday as well with a friend who lives locally and it was refreshing to be in a different church tradition than my own for a while - more meditative and symbolic than what I'm used to perhaps. Not many people there really, but the vicar was very sweet and made a special effort to speak to us...

...Also enjoyed Easter Sunday morning at the church my parents-in-law attend - they had us all write down what Easter Sunday meant to us on little pieces of paper, and stick it to the wall at the front, after listening to a passage being read from Matthew 28:1-10 The thing that struck me most at the time was the phrase "Suddenly Jesus met them." Became newly aware that the Resurrection meant that not only could they meet Jesus again, but that anyone can meet Him, ever since then, if they want to. It is why I can still know Him today. I know this is pretty obvious, but it just reminded me in a new way, OK?...

...I fasted alcohol for Lent, because although I hardly ever drink more than 2 glasses of wine at a sitting, I feel I sometimes use it if I'm particularly stressed and wanting to let go of any worries from the day's events. I don't think that's very healthy. I can see why lots of doctors become alcoholics. So I think it was a success giving it up. At the beginning I thought I would be desperate to have some on Easter Sunday, but as it turns out, I wasn't all that fussed. My first glass of wine did turn my head quite dizzy though...

Drawers

I have sorted through
rose scented talcum powder,
bandages and pearls,
ballroom dancing shoes,
knitting needles,
photos of a pale faced child (me)
and a wooden musical box.

Don't let me have to sort through
fountain pens and assorted nails,
a model knight on horseback,
disposable razors,
botanical linament for joints,
cut out articles on animal rights,
and a leather case with folding coathangers,
At least, not too soon.

Best Moments #1

It seems about time for a cheery post to fit in with the improving weather and to distract my mind from thoughts about cars. Thought it might be nice to periodically describe some of the best moments from my life. I was inspired by hearing Michael Jackson's "Black or White" on the radio yesterday morning and it triggered a vivid memory from last summer.

I am dancing in a circle full of girls some of whom I love very dearly, some of whom I met for the first time yesterday. It is a sweltering summer night, my body feels relaxed from spending the day in an outdoor swimming pool and a spa. I've had a glass of wine and am feeling hyper and part of a party. We are all dancing to "Black or White" and during the chorus we are all yelling as loud as we can over the music "it doesn't matter if you're CHINESE OR GINGER!" I look into the eyes of my best friend and see that she is also completely happy and that is because of me.

This was in fact my best friend's hen do last June. I was organising it, as the chief bridesmaid and a group of us spend the whole weekend at her parent's house in Birmingham. We had a Julie Andrews themed night in on the Friday, spent the Saturday at the pool and spa at the local Virgin Active gym and then went out dancing on the Saturday night. Everything had gone really well, the group had bonded, the weather was fantastic, and Best Friend seemed to have had a great time. My little surprises and organisational responsibilites were all over and all I had to do now was dance (which is one of my favourite things to do). Best Friend's groom-to-be is British Chinese and mr me is ginger, so one of the other girls started the new words to the song and it gave me this fantastic moment of togetherness and elation. Planning hen nights is the kind of thing I love to do because I love to surprise people and make them happy and I was so proud that I had managed to do it well.

Worrying Judderings

Oh dear! My poor little car, which has had a bit of a rough time of things recently, seems to be in trouble again. It is terminally ill in the sense of burning oil a bit and not being worth enough money to make it worthwhile stripping the engine down to fix it. Then I bumped it into someone else's car on a very bad day in December. Logically it wasn't worth fixing this dent if not worth fixing the engine. Now this morning on the way to work, it started juddering in an alarming manner whenever I was stationary in traffic, feeling like my old diesel car instead of its usual smooth-running self.

We do seem to have a very bad time with cars. Over the past 4 years we have had 5 of them. Admittedly for the last year we have had to have one each for work, so that accounts for one - and the one that belongs to mr me has done pretty well over the last year and only had about 2 minor problems, so maybe it is just me who has a terrible effect on the cars. Of the others, one was written off by a hit and run in the middle of the night and 2 had mechanical problems that were too expensive to fix. We are forever having this problem - the problem is more expensive to fix than the car is worth, fixing it will be throwing good money after bad and you just know that if you do, next month something else will go. But when you come to buy a new one you don't have enough cash around to get a much newer one, so it starts to go wrong again. Having said all this, I know plently of people, my parents included, who drive older cars around all the time without having this kind of death rate. Maybe we will end up having to get a car loan. But I really don't want to. A mortgage and a student loan feels like quite enough debt for me and car loans are different because by the time you finish paying the item you bought has much less value instead of more, and there's always the possibility bad things will continue to happen to it. Boo. Going to take my little car to the garage after work, so hopefully they will tell me it's just a spark plug, that will be £5 please. Somehow though, I have a dreadful feeling that's not what will happen...

Hearing the voice of God

Here is a quote from "Psyciatric Interviewing and Assessment" (Rob Poole and Robert Higgo, Cambridge 2006) about pseudohallucinations.

"there is a heterogenous group of experiences that is very similar to hallucinations. They are almost invariably associated with underlying severe emotional distress. The only major exception is a small group of individuals in the general population, neither evidently mentally disordered nor distressed, who have a strong religious faith and who hear the voice of God in their everyday lives. We recognise that they may be right about the origin of the experience, but we prefer to believe that it is due to some other, as yet poorly understood psychological process."

I first ran up against this issue in medical school - the issue that may cause other doctors to think I have an "as yet poorly understood psychological process," and normal people to think I am a bit loopy - the fact that I believe that I hear God speak to me. A hallucination is defined as a sensory perception experienced in the absence of an external stimulus. However, beliefs or perceptions which can be accounted for by the patient's religious or cultural background are not considered true delusions or hallucinations. Also, for it to be a true hallucination, you must be convinced that what you can see or hear is real, and perceptible to anyone close by. We had some examples to work through in small groups to force home these points, and had to say whether they represent hallucinations or not, eg "you are walking home alone late at night, and you are feeling anxious about being followed. you see a shadow in the trees and become convinced it is a person" - that kind of thing. (not a true hallucination by the way) One of the examples was "you have a friend who is devoutly religious. He tells you that he talks to God and God talks back to him." The group started to debate it, but I said "no - that's normal." They knew I was a Christian, so looked at me weirdly and left it at that. A Muslim girl in the group said that this would not be normal for a Muslim, as God spoke only to the prophet, not to other people. (Not sure whether this is the mainstream Muslim view or not, by the way.) Came away from this session feeling slightly uneasy, as I normally do when people think I'm mad.

Now I have never heard God speak with an audible voice that I can hear with my ears. I know of people who have, but for me it's a lot harder to explain than that. It kind of comes like the internal monologue that most of us have all the time. I think I may have this inner voice more than most, because whenever mr me asks me what I am thinking about I can tell him the 2 worries, one random wondering thought and the plan for the curtains in the back bedroom that were chasing each other around my head. When I ask him what he was thinking about, he normally says "dunno - football I think." Anyway...when God speaks, the internal monologue suddenly seems to turn into a conversation - i.e. an answer comes back at you different and faster than what you would have thought for yourself. That is my experience sometimes. I can normally tell it's God by what He says - it is in line with the Bible and what I know about His character, it's frequently something uncomfortable or out of left field, but when I try to follow it or pray into it or whatever action is required, I get a peace about it, which is again difficult to explain.

It's not always like that, and particularly if I am praying for guidance about a specific thing and waiting for God to talk to me like that I can become very confused between my own thoughts and His voice. Sometimes God speaks through reading the Bible - I can be reading and suddenly something jumps out of the page at me and applys itself to my life - I think a lot of Christians have that experience. Sometimes God speaks more through feelings and emotions - normally to let me feel His love or a sense of peace at leaving things in His hands. This happens mostly when I'm worshipping and open to Him. Sometimes God speaks through circumstances in my life, and I know some of the times when I've been closest to Him have been when I'm going through a really hard time and having to depend on Him completely. I'm not one of these Christians who prays about what colour socks to put on in the morning etc - I believe God gave me a brain to decide that kind of thing with, and sometimes I think even the bigger decisions can be taken with some common sense, a background of what kind of things God wants for you and a willingness to hear Him if you're going the wrong way. I think sometimes the decisions which are most significant to us (eg which job should I take?) can be different to the ones which are significant to God (eg He might want us to forgive somebody because otherwise we will do something which hurts them or us and will somehow affect the rest of our lives.)

So anyway - this is my confession. I hear God talking to me. Do you think I'm mentally unwell, or subject to a poorly understood psychological process? (feel free to say so) If you're a Christian, do you hear God's voice and if so how?



"The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice." John 10:3-4

I have to have this photo here in order for it to save on my profile. I think.

Crying in the car park

Yesterday I couldn't help myself, being about 30 pages from the end of "The Time Traveller's Wife" I had to take it into work with me. I started trying to read it in the doctors' common room at lunch time, then realised I wasn't going to be able to focus on it properly, so I took my lunch out to my car and sat there and read to the end and cried a little bit. The fact is that recently my bookaholism has had a bit of a resurgence. For anyone reading this blog who doesn't know me - my name is doctor/woman and I'm a bookaholic. When I am hooked on a book it makes me turn up late for work with my hair not done properly, it makes me stay up late when I'm tired, it makes me unable to engage with my normal life because I'm lost in some little dream world with my book people and then as soon as I've finished I want another one.... Fortunately I read books lots of times, otherwise my out of control appetites would cost me lots of money as well, and who knows what kind of junk I would be reading just to find something new?

The recent rekindling of my love affair with books started I think with getting some new ones for Christmas, then with reading the whole of Watership Down in 1 day when I had a nasty cold back in Feb, and then continued with a trip to the old Oxfam bookshop where I used to buy all my books as a teenager when I was back in liverpool with my sister. Thought I might just make a note here of what I have read so far this year. By the way (R) means I've read it before - like repeats in a TV book

The Time Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffeneger (R) - oh yes this book is sooo good. as I may previously have mentioned...

Duncton Wood, William Horwood (R) read this when I was a teenager. Book about moles - my reading this year seems to have gone along a bit of a talking animals theme! It's a good storyline - this is the first book in a series - some of the later ones were a bit weird if I remember rightly, but this one is a good read, although not earth shatteringly good.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson - hadn't read this before - found it in the Oxfam shop and was intrigued to read it, as the theme is about a very well-respected doctor finding an outlet for the darker side of his personality, which is kind of what I'm doing here. Not the dark side exactly, just the unprofessional, ranty, emotional and independent side. Maybe I had better be careful my blog personality doesn't take on a life of it's own!

Girl Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen (R)- thought would be interesting to read this again when starting psychiatry - it's the account of a girl who was a psychiatric inpatient for 2 years in the 60s. Interesting read - makes you look at things from a different perspective and deconstruct them a bit. Also makes you think about things from the patient's point of view.

Surprised by Joy, CS Lewis (R) - biography by CS Lewis of how he became a Christian. Interesting because he makes lots of very logical deductions from the fact that he experienced this feeling he calls Joy, which led him to his faith in a very intellectual manner, but the feeling he is deducing from is an emotion - the feeling of longing for beauty and fulfillment which is experienced as a sharp pleasure. I'm not very good at explaining it, but he is always very good at explaining things, so read the book if you want to know what I'm waffling about. Also interesting because when he wrote it he had not yet met his wife, who was called Joy.

The Heroes of Asgard, E & A Leary (R) - Norse mythology. Read it because CS Lewis talks so much about it in above book. Can't say it really does a lot for me. My favourite mythology is Tolkien's, which is not a real mythology but an invented one. Also love Arthurian legends. Are legends different to mythology?

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor (R) - Another book I really love. The story of different people's lives running parallel on a terraced street in a northern city with really beautiful prose that is almost poetry. Everybody should read this one. I've just bought his new one - So Many Ways to Begin.

I dared to call him Father, Bilquis Shah - Autobiography by a Muslim-born woman in Pakistan who became a Christian.

Outcast of Redwall, Brian Jacques - Read this because people who read Redwall as children kept telling me how amazing it is. It was ok, but I think it might be one of those things you had to read as a child to love it.

Watership Down, Richard Adams (R) - I always forget just how powerful and wide-reaching this book is. I started it because I was ill and wanted something easy to read, but it's one of those books that completely hooks me every time and I read it all in 24 hours. I love the fact that the rabbits have their own mythology, which adds this other layer to the story.

Have I bored you now? Maybe I should start a book blog as well, but everyone's got one - I would feel a bit unoriginal.

Mangling Medical Careers

Just wanted to put a link in for anyone who would like to understand what is going on but is not a medic. This post explains it very clearly.

On call and resting

So I had a completely manic week last week. Was out somewhere every single week night. Monday night I went out for dinner with 2 friends I know from church (although one now goes to a different church) at Wagamama and gossiped enjoyably about weddings (one is marrying an army boy) and ex boyfriends (the other was visiting hers this weekend). Was fun, although sometimes I feel a bit like a boring Old Married person when meeting up with them. Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday I was on a Child Health Promotion course instead of being at normal work, which was quite fun, although I got a little alarmingly broody at times. Tuesday night me and mr me were at our Alpha course where we have been leading a disscussion group. Wednesday we went to a church baptism service, and I was baptising one of the people - which was very exciting. Thursday met for the first time with our girl's group on marriage (I blogged about this here). It was quite good and helpful, although parts of it left me feeling that I am not a very normal girl. Friday watched videos and ate mini chocolate eclairs with some friends and my sister. Then Saturday was the Alpha course away day - at which one person from my group and one other person I know decided to make a commitment to becoming a Christian. If you are also a Christian you will know how VERY VERY VERY exciting this was for me. Went into town with one of these people to look at Bibles in Borders, and discovered we have a shared love of lots of books, which was cool. Then came home suddenly aware of how utterly exhausted I was and watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" on video with mr me.

Today I have been on call from home. Decided to skive church because a) was knackered, mostly due to overcommiting myself to church things this week and b) might well got called in anyway. Was woken at 11am by the ward calling to ask me to come in and do a couple of jobs. I woke suddenly from a really deep sleep and felt really grotty for an hour or so. Did the ward jobs, gave my colleague who lives at the hospital a lift to the train station with her husband and daughter. She was catching the train to London for her interview tomorrow and was very nervous. Then I came home and spent the afternoon gardening and reading. I am reading "The Time Traveller's Wife" for the second time and am totally bewitched by it again. This is another cause of my knackeredness this week - I keep staying up past midnight reading it. It is such a fantastic book - tear jerking, plot twisting and at its heart an old fashioned love story. V morally questionable in places but I love it and find it totally addictive and very believable for such an unbelievable premise. I quite like being paid to be at home reading and gardening, but being on call does mean I can't really totally relax.

Sorry about the excessive amount of detail. This is a bit of a diary post - more for me than anyone else.