doctor/woman

terrifying ignorance

2011-08-10T15:31:00.000+01:00

I have been more or less glued to the BBC news website over the last 2 days, watching sections of our society break down with no semblance of law and order. Normally I don't get very affected by the news, I tend to employ my doctor emotional detatchment skills (rightly or wrongly), but the riots have really upset me. This is probably partly because I am pregnant again, and rather emotional all the time, but also it seems like the kind of thing that ought to be happening somewhere else, not in England, especially my home city of Liverpool. It's also just so sad to see people terrified, people losing everything and people dying for no particular reason that I can fathom. These things would almost seem more understandable if there was at least a reason, an actual protest about something that degenerates into violence is easier to understand than just sheer destruction and looting because people think they can get away with it.

The most terrifying thing about the whole situation for me has been listening to the one or two snatched interviews with "rioters" on the BBC website, found here and here. The young people interviewed betray a shocking lack of any moral compass at all or even any logical train of thought. Eg. "it's all about the govenment isn't it - the Conservatives whoever they are, it's all about showing the police we can do what we want." Or the young men who claimed that young girls looting was wrong, if someone broke into their own house that would be wrong, but for them to be looting was ok - well not ok, but they were going to do it anyway, it was the government's fault because they couldn't stop them. There was no real anger here, not even any clear idea of who they were rebelling against, no justification at all, but just a sense that if nobody would stop them, they would do whatever the hell they liked. I found it chilling to listen and to think - has anyone ever even spent half an hour one on one with this child, teaching them about personal responsibility, or what society is, or any kind of empathy, or even how to think about something? Or did they just decide not to listen? I do believe that there is "a darkness in the heart of man", as Geoff blogged about here, and I do believe that those involved in the rioting should take the full consequences of their actions - any attempt to exonerate people because they come from a deprived background seems misguided, but listening to these kids made me wonder - how can so many people be growing up to think (or rather not think) like this?

You know you've turned 30 when...

2011-06-28T20:59:00.000+01:00

Slightly distressed today to find that the annoying adverts at the side on Facebook which normally want to tell me about how to have a flat belly and how to entertain my kids have changed slightly. I have always presumed they are based on my demographic information and (hopefully) not my profile picture. However, my demographic information has recently changed to that of a 30 year old, and here are the adverts I have today..

FREE Garden birds CD. "joyful birdsong to help you recognise and enjoy your garden visitors".
Purchasing courses. "study at home. Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply Courses"
SHOCKING Wrinkle-therapy "52 Year Old Mother Looks 39 - Dermatologists are Scared and don't want you knowing this skin secret!"
Patio awnings from £75 "you don't have to spend thousands to get a great quality garden awning."

I'm sorry - was I 30 or 50?

Skip to my Lou

2011-04-05T23:41:00.001+01:00

For various reasons, I have recently been trying a bit more seriously to lose some weight, and have succeeded in so far getting 9lb off since Christmas. I am now back to pre-mr moo weight (only took me 2 and a quarter years!) Inevitably this has involved getting more active. It's surprising how hard it can be to exercise with a toddler around - the buggy is now protested against most of the time, so I can't do a brisk long walk very often - more a slow short walk while restraining a small person with one hand, and with regular breaks to look at stuff like other people's gardens, snails, diggers etc. Swimming - well that involves me standing in one spot while mr moo "swims" and I hold onto him, exercise DVDs cause boredom before we've got through the warm up, jogging...well jogging has never happened and probably never will. So recently I've taken up skipping. Apart from the obvious disadvantage of looking a little like I'm about to put pigtails in my hair and break out into some kind of rhyme about banana splits or double dutch, I think it may be the perfect exercise for mums of toddlers. The rope cost me a grand total of £2.99 for one thing, so the cost per use will hopefully be pretty low. The exercise itself is very high intensity so quite an efficient use of time - currently doing 60 jumps at a rapid rate will have me panting for about 3 minutes, although hopefully that will improve. The skipping rope can easily be put down to go and retrieve a ball, break up a fight, wipe a nose etc and picked up again 2 minutes later. The best advantage of all, though, is that the skipping rope can easily be used in the playground, the garden, my consulting room at work when my patient is late, etc etc. I started off with a mum friend in our local park playground while the boys played together and we took it in turns to skip and run around after them. It worked really well - I can see us starting a craze. Maybe it can become the latest "yummy mummy" thing to do and I can work out some way to sell super stylish skipping ropes and motivational DVDs and somehow make my millions. Or maybe the whole schoolgirl with pigtails image is just too much to get over?

The joy of complaining

2011-03-03T21:02:00.003Z

My recent episode of uncharacteristic behaviour began when out shopping with mr moo (my 2 year old). Walking past a menswear shop in our local shopping centre I noticed in the window, about 1 metre off the ground, an advert to win a "lads holiday in Ayia Napa" featuring a picture of some large and probably enhanced breasts, with strips of fabric about an inch wide covering them (no face was involved in the picture). I saw mr moo clock the picture as well, and saw him think about it for a couple of seconds, but I don't think his vocabulary was up to framing the question in his mind.

I felt immediately angry. Mr moo has seen breasts quite a lot of times, given that I get dressed with him around, and there are a lot of breastfeeding mums in our friendship group at the moment (and that I breastfed him until he was 14 months, but that was a very long time ago in his world). He has recently felt the need to point out "mummy's boobies" when he sees them, but then he also likes to point out "mummy's drink, daddy's drink, my drink" at the dinner table. I've been trying, by my actions and words to let him know that breasts are a natural part of a woman, private, but nothing to be ashamed of, and primarily designed for feeding babies (although I don't have much hope that last lesson will last him past puberty.) I'm not ready for him to see the objectification of women, the lust and sexualisation of our culture that I'm sure will impact him all too soon.

But I kept walking, chuntering to myself in my mind about the irresponsibility of the advert and its placement. It was on the way back that the uncharacteristic moment came to me. Why, I wondered, was I internalising this anger and disquiet? If everyone who was offended by this picture walked past without saying anything, it would just stay there, but it was quite likely that a quick comment to the management would make a difference.

Taking my moment of bravery/insanity/becoming my mother in both hands, and mr moo in both arms so he wouldn't make the encounter worse by running away at the crucial moment, I walked up to the middle aged man rearranging clothes on the sale rack, and asked for the manager. It turned out he was the manager, so I turned on my nicest smile and politest manner and explained that as a mum, I found the picture inappropriate and especially its position at children's eye level. He was unphased, and said "oh yes, we've been told to tone it down a bit when we start getting complaints." I thanked him and walked away, feeling encouraged that he was open to feedback, but wondering why the shop felt it best to push the boundaries of public "decency" as far as it possibly could, rather than just trying not to offend in the first place. However, I suppose the obvious answer to that question is ... to sell stuff to men.

Today was the first time I've been back there, and, to my glee, the advert has been moved up the window, and the picture now shows three relatively clothed women, including faces! However, I'm a bit concerned that the immediate success of my first attempt at this particular brand of complaining will seduce me gradually on down this path. Maybe by the time mr moo is 15, I'll be the kind of toe-curlingly excruciating mother who complains loudly in public about the manners, morals and grammar of complete strangers, causing him to be traumatised for life.

Perfect Mother of the Day

2011-02-02T15:25:00.000Z

Think I should definitely have an award for my "performance" today - washing done and hung out, favourite teddies, blankets and cars washed and cleaned ( to eliminate lingering conjunctivitis germs), child offered healthy food including oily fish, porridge and 4 types of fruit and veg so far, child (more surprisingly) ate some of all food, child taken for a walk to post office (exercise, and conversations re letter boxes and diggers en route), child engaged in creative activity (painting), child had refreshing nap, dinner pre-prepared and mortgage payments adjusted. And it's only 3pm! Maybe I should stay at home and achieve things more often rather than gadding about seeing friends and going to toddler groups. Less fights to break up too!

Disclaimer: this post does not represent the normal state of affairs in the doctor/woman household.

Poem for Christmas Service

2010-12-19T19:23:00.002Z

There's blood on the straw
on my face
on His hair,
my legs won't stop shaking
my belly is an empty wineskin
and pain blurs all the faces
except one.

He lies at my breast
looking at me,
so tiny, so immaculate, so real.
His wide clear eyes fix on mine
and I see eternity.

My heart is full of joy and triumph;
the women cry "a son, a son!"
as if I hadn't always known.
And I long to call Him mine
and I long to say "I made Him,"
but the shadow of Another holds me back.

The little face crumples;
His first cry
melts my heart to milk.
When I said "I am the Lord's servant,"
I thought that with this birth
my task would be complete

...now I realise it's only just begun.

Updates

2010-10-31T22:58:00.003Z

Despite feeling I haven't got time in my life for even just the jobs that keep the house running, I have managed to find a little time (when I should be going to sleep but mr me is away) to update my blog a little. There has been a rather long pause in my posting, so thought I would list the "headlines" that have changed in my life since 2009.

Baby blue is not really a baby now - he will be 2 next month! Can't believe how big he is and how much he has changed - of course this is quite predictable, but I still can't believe it. For this reason I shall have to change his name on the blog to either mr moo or the noodle. Mr moo possibly expresses him better, but may be easily confused with mr me? Will maybe try both and see how it goes.

I finally finished my GP training in May, after much tribulation and stress over the winter. I now work 2 and a half days per week at a practice 12 minutes drive from my house which was one of my training practices. Some days I enjoy all of it, most days I enjoy some of it.

I am busy. Busy, busy, busy. I spend a lot of time trying to streamline my life so I save time for myself. But better not talk too much about this or I'll start whingeing.

I have developed an addiction to charity and vintage shopping. My favourite recent purchase was a vintage dark blue chiffon evening dress with hand beading around waist and hips. I wore it to our church ball recently and felt fabulous.

I have discovered how much fun having a toddler can be. Before having mr moo, I worried that I only really wanted a tiny baby and then would want to give it back.

I have also discovered how draining having a toddler can be. Sometimes I feel like an expert diplomat combined with a disciplinarian. Spend a lot of time not managing to finish a sentence without having to break up a scuffle, wipe a nose, prevent an injury or perform "bumping along on the little red tractor" again.

Well that's all the news I can think of right now. I'd better go to bed, as mr moo is still on British Summer Time.

The first cut is the deepest

2010-09-25T01:00:00.002+01:00

Today I took baby blue for his first haircut. He's not so much of a baby any more now that he's nearly 2, and I was afraid that this day would make him even less of one. I have in fact been putting it off for weeks, or rather months while mr me periodically said "he really needs a haircut now." This week I finally promised I would go, after baby blue had been mistaken for a girl several times.

I spent yesterday evening frantically taking photos, trying to capture the head of golden spiralling slightly out-of-control curls. Woke up today with a feeling of dread that I'd end the day with a short haired grown up boy. I was grateful to find the hairdressers was a small salon with only one stylist and no other customers. I was even more grateful when the kind young mum-of-two salon owner said "oh...look at his hair! you don't want it too short do you?"

Baby blue decided that nestled against my chest was the optimum position for a haircut, I was OK with that, and the wispy curls didn't take long to trim. Having thought I would have to lie down and take sedatives for the rest of the day, I was pleasantly surprised by the results. He still looks like a toddler, but slightly tidier and more male. I do miss the curls, but have kept a couple for sentimental purposes.

Back to School

2009-09-09T23:32:00.004+01:00

You probably know the feeling. It's a very specific, nostalgic, optimistic feeling that only happened on one day per year. I'm certain the retail industry know the feeling, and use it perenially to advertise something or other. The type of weather we've been having lately - still sunny but with a slight chilly edge to it - always brings it back to me so powerfully.

You wake up earlier than usual to the sound of your alarm (or your mum calling you). The air feels a bit colder than the day before, maybe there's some dew on the cars and grass outside. Your new unspoilt uniform is hanging up waiting (instead of on the floor where you usually keep your clothes). Your bag is already packed, containing pencils with unbroken leads, fresh virgin notebooks, maybe a new textbook, a new pen, set of compasses, a clean rubber. You leave the house knowing that you are on time, tidy, and haven't forgotten anything at all. You will have a new teacher, maybe new classmates, no-one will remember how sad and stupid you were last term, or how much you got into trouble, or the pointless argument you had. In fact you can feel yourself morphing into a whole new person... Everything will be different this year...

A few weeks ago I was feeling quite disillusioned with myself. I fairly often wish I was the type of person who got things done, followed things through, and stuck to the high standards I set myself. (This is despite the fact that I have met a few of these types of people and generally they are not any happier than me - probably the reverse, because their standards are even higher.) In the practical world of keeping the house clean, getting DIY done and doing my tax return, and also in the spiritual world of staying close to God, praying regularly, fixing my mind on things that are not of this world, I fall short so often.

As I was praying about this I remembered something which is one of the most beautiful and releasing things about the Christian faith - whenever we ask, God can give us a new beginning. Through Jesus death, which paid for all of our messes, sins, mistakes and hurts, we can have a fresh start a thousand times a day if we need it. When we are forgiven, God looks at us and sees the righteousness of His Son. The tricky bit is remembering to use this amazing freedom. When I do, it's like every day is the first day of term...

I can't sleep and...

2009-08-01T00:48:00.002+01:00

i am wishing that i didn't have to live life in chronological order. imagine if you woke up every day not knowing what part of your life that day would come from. i could wake up with butterflies in my stomach and think "fantastic - i must be just falling in love with mr me - there will be some perfect kissing today." one day i might have lost the use of my legs, and the next day discover i was 9 again, and spend the whole day running and dancing around. i might spend a day caring for baby blue through the chicken pox and be up all night with him, and the next day be 15 again and i could give my mum a big hug of appreciation for all the time she spent caring for me instead of wishing she wouldn't embarrass me. i might work a 12 hour shift in A+E and the next day wake up to find i had retired, and spend the whole day resting, reading, walking by a lake. i might be one day a widow, and the next be back with mr me, and greet him as if we'd been separated by death for years. any day i woke up and baby blue was still a baby i would be so thrilled to hold him in my arms as he was my tiny baby again, and no matter how hard the day and night were i would treasure every second.

I suppose this idea is a little like the concept behind "The Time Traveller's Wife" - and shows the sheer joy and privilege of a single day with our loved ones. Somehow it is very hard to live in that joy when you know that tomorrow will be "just the same". But it never is exactly the same. Living in time is the enemy of valuing the moment. Anybody else fancy my idea of a mixed up life? i suppose it might be a little bit hard to ever get anything done...

Warning: sentimental post coming up

2009-07-04T22:11:00.002+01:00

I think I've finally understood one of the mysteries of being a mother. It's the trait that young people can't understand as they grow up and become independent - why their mother can't let go, can't let their babies grow up. "Time has moved on," the child reasons, "I've changed, why can't she accept that?"

It's because she's still caught in the magic of this fleeting time, the time I'm living through now. It's a time when tiny hands come up around your neck and cling to you, when huge clear blue eyes gaze up at yours with total trust, when a tiny warm body snuggles into yours, sucking nutrition, growth, life from you, when a wave or a pincer grip can make you so proud you can hardly speak, and when a little face splits into a smile of pure delight at the sight of your face in the morning. It's such an unspeakably precious time, and it's over so fast, no wonder mothers say, "But s/he's still my baby..." I suppose the only way to learn to let go is to remember that they never were ours, they were only lent to us for a short time.

Baby Blue greets his adoring public

2009-04-16T20:57:00.002+01:00

I have decided that I should become a nomad and live in an extended family community. Actually this is not true. But over the last week I have been sorely tempted. We spent 3 days back in Liverpool, where both my parents and my in laws live, over the Easter weekend. Baby blue behaved like a little cherub almost the whole time. There were lots of new things to look at, dribble on and put into his mouth. There were scores of people desperate to be the next one to cuddle him, play with him, show him the flowers in their gardens and put him back to sleep. I love that he is so sociable and happy to be passed around (until the separation anxiety kicks in in a few months' time), but I am slightly distressed that everybody now thinks he is a fantastically easy baby and I am generally moaning about nothing when I complain that he can be clingy, bored and grumpy.

Since coming home, obviously, he has been clingy, bored and grumpy. But to be fair to the boy, I've had some empathy training over the last few days. I've had a nasty infection in the gum over my impacted wisdom tooth, and it's surprising just how grumpy a bit of toothache can make you. He's been a lot more settled today, probably because I didn't stop moving - 10am coffee at a friend's house, followed by Ikea and lunch there, followed by another coffee in Borders with another friend, followed by the doctors' and the pharmacy. He just likes new places. Maybe he's going to be an explorer...

negative voices

2009-04-01T21:18:00.003+01:00

It all started this morning when a friend dropped by to lend me a baby door bouncer... My elderly next door neighbour said hello to her and her 1 year old daughter, and she mentioned that it was a lovely day for gardening. He then said pointedly to me, "Yes, did you hear that? it is a lovely day for gardening."

Now our next door neighbour is a retired man (normally really lovely), and obsessed with his garden. As far as I can tell, he spends most of every day out there, despite his fairly advanced lung disease, and it is always pristine and beautiful in every season. Our garden, on the other hand, is a little rough around the edges. It has a wild unmown section at the bottom, which is a deliberate choice to give bees etc some habitat, but I sense he's not too keen on that feature, since some weeds grow there. The beds mostly have easy care perrenials in, because that's all I had time for at the best of pre-baby times. And ok the lawns haven't been mown yet this year, and things have gone a bit "to seed" since the pelvic pain kicked in halfway through pregnancy. But in my opinion it looks presentable. Compared to two and a half years ago when we bought the house and the plot was half rubble, half bed full of weeds, it's practically an oasis.

What was really disturbing was what that simple jokey comment, (which I may have totally read too much into), did to the rest of my day. I was instantly torn between paranoia (oh no he thinks I'm a terrible neighbour and inadequate housewife, gallivanting off to baby groups all week without attending to my own back garden) and anger (doesn't he understand what it's like having a new baby to take care of and how difficult it is to even keep the house clean?). I became unable to focus on the conversation with my friend after she came into the house, even though she dismissed him as a cheeky old man, and then I began to feel bad that I was coming across as scatty and absent and not in control. We talked a little about it at the end, and she said to me as she left "You're doing a great job. Hear that." But sadly this was no use. The negative comment had sunk into my brain somehow and was blocking all positivity out.

By the time I set off for my breastfeeding support group, my brain was a storm of negative voices. I spent the pleasurable sunny walk across the park thinking about my choices as a mother, and spiralling down into self-doubt. I began thinking about what will happen when I go back to work. Currently I'm planning to complete my training working half time, and then get a permanent job with even less sessions than that, if possible. I started hearing the (mostly male) voices of my colleagues at my current practice, who already feel that a year of maternity leave is an extended holiday and that I won't remember anything when I get back. Soft option they were saying to me, don't you care about your career? don't you want your son to go to private school like our children? don't you want to be a partner? Then my paranoid version of my parents voices started, You need to give your time to your child, they grow up so fast... and Christians I have read books by if you have the means you should give up work, God intended mums to look after their children. I began to feel that I will be giving both baby blue and my work less than my best. Next I began to worry what mr me was feeling about me, and projected onto him the view that I spend all week having fun and coffee with my friends, while he slaves away at work. Then I started wondering what other mums think of me, and whether they see me as a failure because baby blue is still in disposables and still has to be cuddled to sleep for his daytime naps. Then my childless friends - do they think I've turned into an antisocial baby bore? Then my own judgements on me - I forgot to clean his tooth again this morning, maybe he'll grow up with tooth decay... I didn't realise he was hungry for half an hour of grumpiness, maybe he's not growing as well as he should be because I don't feed him enough.... You get the general idea.

Fortunately the thought bog was stopped when I got to baby cafe by an hour of chatting to fellow mums, venting my frustrations re the next door neighbour, and feeling a little more that everyone's in the same boat i.e. we're all doing our best. This evening has cheered me up even more, with some affirmation from mr me, and an 8pm decaf vanilla latte at Borders, accompanied by some Marie Claire reading while he kindly manned the baby monitor at home. However, just typing out these frustrations and insecurities and (mostly unfairly attributed) opinions of others has already put a bit of a weight back into my chest.

What really annoys me is that I am still this vulnerable and weak. I was chatting with some church friends last week and bitching about the fact that most church seminars and days for women seem to keep reinforcing the same point - that you are accepted and valued by God, you are His daughter, His princess, you don't have to worry what others think of you. I implied that I'd got that by now, I'd heard it enough times, couldn't they move on to something meatier? Not all women were seething masses of insecurity, I said. Well maybe they're not, but sadly, and mortifyingly, it seems that I still am. I still need this message to sink from my head to my heart. I know this needs more prayer. I know I also need practically to learn to let little comments bounce off me, especially as society seems to judge mums for every choice that they make. I'll never be able to do everything and please everybody. I need to learn to be happy and confident in our family choices and in doing my best. But how? Does anyone have any more tips on how to beat the guilt, insecurity and self doubt that being a mum seems to exponentially increase?

the crest of a wave

2009-03-04T18:02:00.005Z

I've had a few feelings of euphoria over the last two weeks, and when people ask me if I've had a good day I realise that I really have. Suddenly the pieces of my new life seem to be falling into place and I feel like I can balance again. Apparently it is quite common for this to happen when your baby is around 3 months, but I don't mind being common in this particular case.

For one thing, the feeding seems to have finally got easier, as everybody told me it would when baby blue was 3 weeks old (I didn't really believe them). Soreness is now rare, and I've managed to feed in various situations now - sitting cross legged on the floor, sitting in a folding chair, in a cafe, whereas before, I had to be either lying down or propped up by multiple pillows. This makes such a huge difference to my day, as I no longer dread each feed, I can enjoy the time spent with baby blue, and I don't dread going out of the house for longer than two hours.

Also making a huge difference to my state of mind is the improvement in baby blue's sleeping patterns. We've started over the last 2 weeks to try gently getting him into a routine, and it seems to be working relatively well. He now goes to bed at 7, meaning the evenings are free for grown up time, although he tends to wake and cry once or twice. I feed him before I go to bed, again at around half ten, and he now goes right through to 5 or 6am before needing another feed!! This is another thing that seemed totally impossible 6 weeks ago. It's amazing how much rosier the world looks when your sleep comes in 6-7 hour chunks rather than 2 hour ones!

Then there are the changes in baby blue which are happening every day. It's now possible to play with him, as he will grab a rattle, smile and laugh when I pull faces or sing songs, and have a conversation with me consisting solely of vowel sounds. Somehow the fact that I'm encouraging his development makes my day feel so much more productive than when I got to teatime and had only managed to keep him alive, fed and clean and maybe checked my emails and put a load of washing on. He can also entertain himself much better, meaning I might actually have time to hang the washing out as well as putting it in the machine!

I have discovered that getting out somewhere every day, even if it's just a walk to the Co-op, keeps me sane, and I am blessed with knowing several other new mums, so I'm rarely short of someone to have coffee or lunch with. I've been going to a breastfeeding support group, which has really helped me, and I've also started postnatal Pilates and baby massage classes, which are good fun, and have helped me make a few new friends. Today I even went to a special baby-friendly showing at the Hyde Park Cinema in Leeds. It was a little difficult to hear the movie at times! The moment when a gunshot went off in the film also caused a little bit of commotion among the babies present. But it was really great to be at the cinema again.

I'm sure within the next few weeks there will be more testing times, when baby blue starts teething, or starts waking again as he gets more hungry, when he starts rolling over and I have to start watching him like a hawk... But it's good to know that actually, I love this time, I love being a full time mum just now, and I've come through so many of the difficult things. I know if there are more difficult times, I'll be able to come through them as well, with help from God, mr me and my friends and family.

doctor/woman/mother

2009-02-01T21:58:00.004Z

I've taken a long time to get around to this post, and I'm still not quite sure what to say. Everything sounds like such a cliche. On 29th November 2008 I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy after 53 hours of contractions and 17 hours of established labour. I didn't realise just how exhausting, painful and draining it would be. Classically though, as soon as I heard his cry and knew he was OK, everything else was forgotten in the wonder of meeting our surprisingly clean, deliciously warm baby boy with his huge dark blue eyes. I think I shall here call him baby blue, as that's one of my many nicknames for him. He has changed our lives forever, of course, as babies do. We are both head over heels in love with him and can spend hours just watching his face. He can get me up four times in the night (as he did last night), leaving me totally exhausted and grumpy in the morning, but one big smile as I get him dressed melts my heart completely.

Some things have been (and still are) so hard, including the slow torture of sleep deprivation, both me and baby blue getting the hang of breastfeeding, getting used to the changes in my body, the sheer insane wash of emotions that swept over me in the first couple of weeks... I found the huge shift in my identity and thought processes a bit of a shock, as I got accustomed to being a life support machine and being tied so closely to this tiny dependent demanding little person. At the moment being a doctor seems so far away, and even remembering to be a woman requires a little focus and time to myself. Mostly I'm just a new mum - worrying about doing everything just right, fighting to get myself enough rest and down time, overcome by this new love, and convinced that this little boy is the most perfect in the world. I am desperate to just have a bit more predictability to my life, and to be able to leave him for a few hours, and simultaneously aware that I should savour every second of this time, which will never come again. So forgive me if I don't post very often, but I'll try to keep you a little bit updated. But mostly I'll be wrapped up in my son for a while...

Highs and lows

2008-11-19T21:52:00.003Z

The best things about being pregnant:

I have loved feeling the movements of the baby and how they remind me there's a whole other person inside me!
I really really am going to have a baby!
People telling me I look great (although suspect they may be just saying what you're supposed to say to pregnant women)
A good excuse for resting, asking for help and generally doing what I want to.
Lots of presents.
Closeness to mr me and having him look after me.
I've had quite a peaceful, placid state of mind since the end of the first trimester (most of the time).
Amazement at what my body can really do.
Constantly being offered chairs, waved across the road etc
Finally the ultimate excuse for going into mothercare and cooing over booties.
The prospect of a year off work.
People's kindness in helping us out with all sorts of things.

And the worst things...

How I felt for the whole of the first 3 months! (ie exhausted, nauseous, vomiting, emotional and a little depressed)
People who feel it is socially acceptable to comment on your size, eg "aren't you big?" "how many have you got in there?" etc.
Busybodies. Everybody has some advice to give, even if you show no sign of wanting it.
Getting the same comments all the time. "I expect you're all ready now then aren't you?" NO! I'VE BOUGHT 3 BABYGROS AND THAT'S IT! I'M A TERRIBLE MOTHER! or "do you know what you're having? what do you think it will be?" ERM...A BABY PERHAPS?
Symphysis pubis dysfunction. It's a nasty condition that gives you pelvic pain on certain movements, especially turning over in bed.
Being tired all the time, and therefore less able to sort everything out and make a perfect nest like I want to.
Heartburn. boo.
Becoming suddenly unable to talk about anything else and worrying that I've turned into a baby bore.
Fear of losing friends/ independence/social life etc.
Fear of labour
I've been weirdly inward looking, and haven't always felt as sociable as usual. Less urge to write this blog as well, leading to very infrequent posting - sorry.
Having to think about everything I put in my mouth. Am seriously wanting 2 glasses of wine and a plate of sushi!
Feeling that my body's not my own any more.

However, it will all be over soon and then my life will change forever...

After two years of work...

2008-08-21T17:21:00.005+01:00

The garden when we bought the house in 2006...

And today, after much work by myself and help from friends and family. I think it's not too bad for a girl who never lived in a house with a garden before!

Pluto?

2008-07-28T20:37:00.003+01:00

Interesting conversation occurred at coffee time in the doctors' room today. There were 4 male GP partners and myself in the room, and 2 of them were having a long and involved conversation about the practice nurses, and problems that keep erupting with them and communication issues. Here is how it went:-

Partner 1: "What you've got to remember is that men are from Mars, women are from Venus..."

Partner 2: (pantomiming a secret nod towards me) "Careful, there's one in the room. And she's got pregnancy hormones...watch out!"

Partner 1: "No that doesn't count; she's a doctor."

***************************

So where am I from? I'm confused.

When I was 26...

2008-07-15T20:37:00.005+01:00

I was going to try to do this each year for my birthday. Oh well, I missed that slightly, but may as well fill you in on all the things I did for the first time last year...

...rode my first horse.

...resuscitated a newborn baby for the first time

...took my first trip to America.

...had my first ultrasound scan

...attended a 90th birthday party for the first time.

...had my first day at the races.

...took my first membership exams.

...danced with a soldier for the first time.

...bought my first proper makeup that cost more than £5 per item. In Bloomingdales!

...had my first midwife appointment.

...sanded a floor.

...had my first bout of sciatica.

...took my first yellow cab.

...bought my first tube of eye cream.

...went off chocolate!! (briefly)

...conceived our first child!

a new adventure

2008-07-14T21:00:00.002+01:00

I've been thinking about how to write this post for a long long time now. Far too long in fact, and I don't blame everyone if they've given up on me and assumed I've gone back to live entirely in the real world. I have some exciting news that has been rather too long delayed...

I am enceinte, gravid, expectant and fecund. I am with child. I have one in the oven. I am knocked up, in the family way and up the duff. In fact, we are going to have a baby in December.

My reasons for not blogging so far may be poor, but I'll make my excuses anyway. For the first 12 weeks it was not public knowledge, I felt hideous and ill all the time, and I couldn't settle myself to believe I wouldn't have an early miscarriage til I'd seen the 12 week scan and knew everything was fine. If I had been able to blog about it during that time, I think I would have sounded rather morose and depressed about the whole thing. Pregnancy seemed to mainly involve vomiting, having no energy to spare for anything but work, and being told lots of things I shouldn't do. None of it really felt real, even though we'd been wanting a baby for some time.

Since then I don't have such a good excuse, except that suddenly it all became very hard to encapsulate into words. Also I have been going to bed uncommonly early, due to feeling wiped out after a day at work, whereas late at night was when I usually used to blog. However, I had a week of leave last week, during which I slowed down enough to look at clouds, lie in bed feeling my growing bump, and think about things a little bit again. I also felt the baby moving for the first time, like a fluttering inside me, or like the feeling that I've just left my stomach behind on a rollercoaster. The bonding has been a bit slow to get started, but suddenly I'm really genuinely excited, and starting to feel how strong my love is for the tiny scrap of a thing growing inside me. So I thought it was about time I shared my news with you. Forgive me for taking so long.

a small post squeezed past the bloggers block

2008-05-09T16:47:00.002+01:00

So I passed my exam! In theory, this might mean I never have to take another one! Sooner or later, I'm sure I'll crack and need to do some course or other that gives me more validation of my intelligence. But that might not be for a long time... All I have to do now is complete 9 more months of training and do some online assessments with my trainer. And then I will be an independent GP! which is actually a bit of a scarey thought.

I feel like I should feel more elated than I do. At the moment I feel a bit flat and anti-climactic. But hopefully soon it will sink in what this really means. Apologies for the lack of promised more regular blogging. Hopefully some inspiration will strike me soon.

where i am now

2008-04-12T20:26:00.004+01:00

Right now I am sitting at the computer in our small, messy front bedroom that we use as a study. I am partly wishing I had the time and energy to sort through all the notes and paperwork in this room, but just now, I don't. The blinds are still open and I can see the deep blue not-quite-dark-yet sky, and hear the boys who are still playing out on the street. I'm huddled in a hunched position with very poor posture, because I feel cold. I'm wearing a hoodie and jeans and my hair is in a mess. I know there are things that I must do, because I will feel better when they are done, but I feel too physically and mentally tired to do them.

Tomorrow I'm travelling to Croydon, because I'm sitting an exam there on Monday. If I pass it, it means I have all the exams necessary to become a member of the Royal College of GPs, and to complete my training scheme successfully in February 09. It means I can be free to just work and live for a while, see people, garden, sort out the papers in this room, enjoy the summer etc. If I fail it, it means another six months of exam anxiety and work, another £1260 to pay, and I will spend our lovely 2 week holiday in Scotland in September working for the exam. It's a practical-type exam - I have to see 13 actors who are playing patients, communicate effectively, ethically and manage them well in the space of 10 minutes each. Quite stressful. I'm quite stressed. But I know I have worked for it.

Instead of typing this, I should be - checking my train times, and the frequency of the connexion across London, checking the exam details, putting a tendon hammer and tape measure into my doctor's bag, working out how to carry my suit without squashing it, packing my case, having a shower, doing my hair, calming my mind down, going to bed early.

I shall go and do these things now. I need to stay calm, but just now I feel numb and unreal. If you have a second, please pray for me or wish me luck. I'll let you know how it goes, and try to blog a little more regularly when it's over.

glee

2008-03-19T13:36:00.004Z

On Thursday and Friday last week, I had to visit two different hospitals where I used to work. One trip was to spend time with the substance misuse liason nurse, and the other to try and finish off an audit I was supposed to be doing during my last job. The whole process filled me with glee that I am no longer working in hosipitals.

"Ha ha ha," I thought to myself, as a very loud alarm (possibly the fire alarm - who knows?) went off for five minutes for no observable reason, making conversation almost impossible, but not causing anybody to stop their work. "Hee hee hee," I gleefully mused, as I listened to a stressed looking SHO have a 15 minute row down the phone with another SHO about a rota swap. (although obviously I was sorry for the poor bloke.) "Ho ho ho," I chuckled when I had to eat some form of cardboard in the oppressively decorated canteen. "Ha ha ha ha!" I felt like saying, when a consultant from my previous job tried to give me a rollicking about the fact that there are discharge summaries piling up to be done in the junior doctors' office, without realising that I had actually left and didn't work there any more.
Felt like telling him that now I work in a place where people actually treat me as a fellow professional rather than some kind of naughty lazy student who needs to be told what's what.

And in all the quiet moments on my own, walking down the corridor, or washing my hands in the skin-stripping soap, and especially in the car on the way home with the windows down, I was singing a little song... It was the tune of "Bread of Heaven/ you're not singing/ are you scotland in disguise", and it went, "I don't work here, I don't work here, I DON'T WORK HERE ANY MORE!!! (any more) I don't work here any more!"

The marriage meme

2008-03-02T17:21:00.004Z

I stole this meme from Charlotte, who did it for Valentine's Day. I'm a bit late, but never mind. Here is the history of my marriage, without which I know I wouldn't be as happy as I am.

1. Where/how did you meet?

Technically we met at Christian festival Spring Harvest when we were both about 10 and our families were there together, but I think we first spoke when we met during sixth form. I was 16, he was 17 and we went in a big group to watch Titanic at the cinema.

2. How long have you known each other?

That was January 1998 - so ten years!!!!!!!! scarey.

3. How long after you met did you start dating?

It was nine months later in September of that year, after much shyness, flirting and discovering that we had things in common. I had decided it wasn't a good idea to date someone who didn't share my faith, and at the time he wasn't a Christian. I started to really like him in April 98, and prayed for him for the next 5 months, until he became a Christian in Sept 98.

4. How long did you date before getting engaged?

We talked about it after 1 year, then got properly engaged after 2 years.

5. How long was your engagement?

Two years until mr me finished his degree in Birmingham.

6. How long have you been married?

5 years.

7. What is your anniversary?

6th July

8. How many people came to your wedding reception?

About 120

9. What kind of cake did you serve?

One tier fruit cake, two tiers sponge cake, if I remember rightly.

10. Where was your wedding?

We were married at St Mary's Grassendale, Liverpool, which was mr me's parish church, and was very lovely. Our reception was at the Bluecoat Arts Centre in the centre of Liverpool, which had a lovely walled garden in the middle of the city.

11. What did you serve for the meal?

It was a buffet with large joints of pork and beef, and salmon.

12. How many people were in your bridal party?

Mr me had two best men - his two best friends from primary school, and I had four bridesmaids - my sister, his sister, my best friend and another very good friend I had written to through all my teenage years.

13. Are you still friends with them?

yes.

14. Did your spouse cry during the wedding ceremony?

No, but I welled up walking down the aisle and seeing so many faces.

15. Most special moment of your wedding day?

Very hard to choose just one... leaving the house with my dad ...saying our vows was pretty amazing... having time to talk in the car on the way to the reception, and realising that we really really were married.

16. Any funny moments?

One of mr me's best friends mums tried to stuff confetti down his trousers on the way out at the end, traumatising him slightly! I went rather lightheaded when the hairdressers gave me a glass of champagne when I'd been sitting under the dryer for about 2 hours.

17. Any big disasters?

Apparently the cake got knocked over, but I didn't know about it til afterwards, as they managed to restore it to its former glory.

18. Where did you honeymoon?

A cute little cottage in Cornwall. We pootled along the coast and had cream teas and paddled. It was lovely.

19. For how long?

Two weeks.

20. If you were to do your wedding over, what would you change?

I would have more money now, so I would be able to have a few of the things we had to miss out on. But it was a lot of fun doing it all on a shoestring.

21. What side of the bed do you sleep on?

The right, so I can lie on his right shoulder when he hugs me. tis the law.

22. What size is your bed?

Double - the room's not really big enough for anything else. But we have a king-size quilt.

23. Greatest strength as a couple?

We have worked out ways to communicate and negotiate, so that we hardly ever argue in a painful way any more. We have a lot of strength from our shared faith, which gives us purpose, and helps us to gradually become better and better able to lay down our lives for each other.

24. Greatest challenge as a couple?

Like Charlotte - I'd say neither of us is very practical in a DIY kind of way.

25. Who literally pays the bills?

We both handle different ones. Recently I almost got us cut off by omitting to pay the phone bill for a very long time.

26. What is your song?

"Brown Eyed Girl", Van Morrison

27. What did you dance your first dance to?

"Let's stay together" by Al Green. Mr me had sworn we could only have music if I promised we didn't have to do a first dance, so I told everybody how important it was to him. However, his best men ignored him, and organised for the band to announce it, and up we had to go. That was another very special moment for me, cos I hadn't expected to get a first dance, and it was amazing. Also thought it was a pretty good choice of song, considering we didn't ask for it.

28. Describe your wedding dress?

My housemate made it for me. It was white dupion silk, just off the shoulder with a V neck and a V waist and an A line skirt. The top was boned and had an embroidered panel down the front.

29. What kind of flowers did you have at your wedding?

White roses for the bridesmaids and I had white roses with purple other things mixed in. And pretty little ones that I think are called wax flowers in my hair.

30. Are your wedding bands engraved?

No. What a dull last question.

GP land forever

2008-02-20T22:55:00.003Z

I'm back where I want to be. I've finished my last hospital job, and I'm now working part time at a practice, part time for a substance misuse service. No more nights. No more long weekend shifts. Today was my first full day of doing my own surgeries and visits, and I enjoyed it. There are still stresses, of course, and I still seem to be pretty busy with paperwork and learning and assessments. But I love the job really. I love working in a place where people feel comforted and listened to rather than scared and depersonalised. I love seeing people's homes, families, normal clothes and the progress of their lives. I love working in a place where all the staff make an effort to know your name and what you are like and you are treated as a person by your employers instead of some kind of slave shift drone. I love having a room and a doctor's bag and driving out on visits on a frosty bright day and organising my own time. My new trainer seems really encouraging and nice, and the drug/alcohol job is interesting and challenging. It's good to be back

brief pause on a Sunday evening

2008-01-27T23:56:00.000Z

...to feel sad about nothing...

...sad that another busy week has just sped past and another is on its way...

...to think about my friends, who seem to be going through some hard things recently...

...to ponder how I'll feel if I fail this exam on Wednesday, which I really think I might...I'm not good at doing failure...

...to hope that mr me is really ok, and not pretending to be ok because he knows I'm only just coping with myself, as usual...

...to wish it was the summer time and I was escaping to a cottage somewhere...

...to wish I spent less time wishing my life away...

...to think about the sermon today, and ask God to give me a servant heart...

...to count my blessings, which are many, including a husband who loves and supports me, a career that fulfils and stimulates me, friends and family who care about me, and all I need materially...

...to decide it really is time for bed, actually...

Nocturnal Medidroid

2008-01-17T03:57:00.000Z

the lonely robot
walks down the endless
dirty-green corridor
and dreams
in her robot subconscious
of the time when she was a girl
with a home and a husband and friends
instead of a nest, an alarm clock
and a hole in her heart.

No!
I have no heart
until I can be a girl again.

A year of blogging

2008-01-15T23:29:00.000Z

Today is my first blog birthday - a year since I sat down and made myself a new secret identity. (It's not very secret now - when I visited my parents' church in Liverpool at Christmas, a man I had never met before asked me if I was doctor/woman - think my mum must have been spreading the address about!) I have mostly really enjoyed blogging - it can be a bit of a self-absorbed occupation, but I am someone who naturally needs a lot of introspection and self-reflection. If I don't get time to think through and come to terms with what's going on in my life I tend to get stressed and emotional. I had got a bit that way this time last year, and I think that writing this has really helped me to get a bit unblocked and to get back in touch with my more creative, wondering, thoughtful side.

One advantage of a blog over a diary is that the fact that some other people read it makes you feel some obligation to keep it up, even if you don't feel much like it. Since living away from home I've never really successfully managed to keep up a diary without leaving very long gaps in it when I just got too busy to write. Another advantage, as I wrote in my first ever post, is that "if I ever manage to write something clever, someone might actually read it."

If you are somebody who keeps up with my blog, thanks for your interest in such mundane subjects as me being stressed at work (all the time) or what I did on my holidays. I hope that sometimes it gives you space to reflect and think too.

In other news, I am on nights again this week, and am just developing a cold, so I won't write more as I shall end up moaning. Roll on 4th Feb, when paeds will be over, I'll have done my exam, and I'll be heading away from shift work forever!!

Happy Christmas!

2007-12-20T18:02:00.000Z

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

2007-12-15T01:57:00.000Z

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

2007-12-11T22:54:00.000Z

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

2007-12-01T14:55:00.000Z

misc

2007-11-30T01:35:00.000Z

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

2007-11-29T05:05:00.000Z

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

2007-11-08T22:16:00.001Z

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

2007-10-28T04:28:00.000Z

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

2007-10-10T00:01:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-25T21:05:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-20T17:18:00.000+01:00

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

2007-09-20T17:01:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-23T03:05:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-22T03:49:00.000+01:00

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

2007-08-12T23:16:00.001+01:00

Sweetpea

2007-08-06T18:49:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-28T23:40:00.000+01:00

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

2007-07-26T09:46:00.000+01:00

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

More books!

2007-07-16T21:06:00.001+01:00

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

2007-07-04T19:43:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-22T23:31:00.000+01:00

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!

2007-06-11T22:26:00.000+01:00

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

2007-06-05T17:53:00.000+01:00

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...

2007-06-04T14:19:00.000+01:00

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

2007-05-31T16:56:00.001+01:00

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?

2007-05-17T19:50:00.000+01:00

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!!!

2007-05-05T13:19:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-26T08:23:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-19T09:50:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-18T13:26:00.000+01:00

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...

2007-04-17T11:42:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-14T14:55:00.000+01:00

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

2007-04-05T23:10:00.000+01:00

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

2007-03-28T14:15:00.000+01:00

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

2007-03-21T10:23:00.000Z

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

2007-03-17T10:25:00.000Z

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

2007-03-15T22:14:00.000Z

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

Crying in the car park

2007-03-12T16:14:00.000Z

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

2007-03-12T11:11:00.000Z

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

2007-03-11T20:08:00.000Z

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.

Girly Saturday

2007-03-04T16:58:00.000Z

Had a great Saturday yesterday - felt like some kind of high-maintenance lady-who-lunches. One of my Christmas presents from mr me was a voucher for a back massage and facial at a hotel up in Headingley, and I finally managed to book it in for yesterday afternoon. It was amazing and really relieved a lot of tension in my jaw and shoulders and also now my skin is all soft and velvety, (although some spots coming now). Decided that it would also be good to get a much needed haircut the same afternoon, and spent the time in between in charity shops, where I purchased 2 handbags and a jacket for £8.50. The jacket is a rose pink velvet one and I got one black and white handbag and one brownish tweed kind of one. I came home very relaxed, with shiny straight hair and feeling quite pleased with myself. tee hee.

IMGs

2007-02-28T14:36:00.000Z

It is a very bad time to be an IMG in Britain. For those who don't know what this means, an IMG is an international medical graduate - someone who took their medical degree outside the EU area. Life is chaotic enough for all junior doctors at the moment with the new system called MMC, where everybody is given their jobs through a centralised computer system and there is an entirely new system of training, as I briefly ranted about before here. I am one of the few to be immune from this intensely stressful process, as the people already on a GP training scheme are able to complete it without having to apply for anything else. Click on this link to see how it's affecting someone else in the system. So there is an immense amount of uncertainty around for most people, but it is much much worse if you graduated outside the UK and Europe. In March of last year, with scarcely any warning, the Department of Health announced that it was abolishing permit-free training for doctors from overseas. In effect this means that if an applicant for a post is from the UK or EEA, and is competent for that post, the post cannot be given to a doctor from overseas.

There are many reasons for this. Historically, 30% of UK doctors have been IMGs, they could train in this country without a work permit due to our need for their skills and the shortage of UK trained doctors. In recent years the number of UK graduates has risen and the number of doctors coming in from abroad has also risen due to the popularity of the UK for training and the access to the assessment exams to work in this country. This in addition to the reorganisation of jobs for MMC has led to a lot of competition for posts. While most people agree that it is important for all UK trained doctors to be able to get a job in this country, and that the GMC should stop encouraging IMGs to come to this country by continuing to conduct the PLAB (Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board) exams, it is the effect on those doctors already here that seems deeply unfair.

Doctors from other nations who come here first have to pass the PLAB exams (which are expensive), then frequently have to work in non-training approved posts to get experience to get to the final goal - jobs approved for training which can then lead on to registrar and even consultant posts if they are very successful. Many doctors have been here for several years, moving around different SHO (senior house officer) jobs, working away from their families (especially if they are married to another doctor), moving around, living in hospital accommodation, uprooting their families and working difficult shift systems. Suddenly many of them feel that it has all been for nothing, they will not be able to get onto training posts, and many will probably have to leave the country and try to start post-graduate training again elsewhere.

I am pretty aware of these issues at the moment, as I am the only UK graduate working as an SHO in this psychiatry department at my current hospital. The other SHOs are all IMGs and they all have a very high level of stress at the moment. Some have been shortlisted for interviews, some have not. Most have spent at least some time on the internet in recent weeks looking at jobs in Australia. One is currently in Australia checking things out there. Others are chasing round gathering information for their interviews, trying to second-guess what the interview process will be like. Several have been ill. A young Pakistani doctor who was working in the UK, and involved in the legal challenge from BAPIO to the DoH's decision has recently commited suicide. It all makes me feel very guilty, both that my job is so safe because I am British and to be part of a country that would do this to people who have been helping to provide a service to our NHS for many years.

A Friend

2007-02-19T19:22:00.000Z

Having moaned excessively here about having difficulty making proper friends at work due to all the moving around different jobs, I have now managed to make a friend after 9 days in my new job, and I feel that she will be a good one. She's the only other female SHO, she grew up in India, she is married with a little daughter, but lives apart from her husband during the week, so is effectively a single parent doing a full-time medical job in terms of her workload. Somehow we seemed to like each other straight away - kind of had to, being the only 2 girls, but today it well and truly leapfrogged the colleague-friend barrier due to a discussion about faith. I won't go into our whole discussion here, as it was a private one. Briefly, she is a Muslim, but with a lot of interest in Christianity and we found lots of things in common to talk about. Also chatted about recipes and skincare (which overlap each other a lot more in Indian culture than in ours - think I would like to try the crushed almonds and milk face treatment) and other girly issues. Am invited to go to her house soon and meet her daughter etc. Feel hugely encouraged about this - I know I sound a bit pathetic being so excited to make a friend, but it did feel special. Maybe partly because it wasn't some diffident British affair where we both gradually come to understand we are friends by little gestures and invitations and understandings. She just came right out and said she was happy to have met me and she has been praying for someone at work to talk to about her faith. After my general whining previously about friendships not ever going beyond the end of the six-month job, I propose to make sure that this one is different.

Middle aged Saturday

2007-02-17T18:12:00.000Z

I am now officially old. Here is how I have spent my Saturday. I got up when mr me left to play football, spent the morning going food shopping, taking my bottles to the recycling bin and doing the washing. Then I had lunch while reading the paper. I spent the afternoon setting up my new compost bin and filling it with alternate layers of rotting apples from the bottom of the garden (where they fell from the tree in autumn) and paper from the shredder and then generally tidying up the garden. Then I got in and sat down with a cup of tea and a crossword, then called my parents, then got the washing in and had a conversation over the garden fence with my next-door neighbour about the weather, his chest and the garden. I have no plans for Saturday night except that maybe the bathroom needs cleaning!

I am maybe not quite as sad as this sounds. I did have plans last night (meal out with mr me for belated Valentine's day) and do have plans tomorrow night (friend's birthday), but I do feel a bit old and boring nowadays because owing your own house just seems to swallow your weekends, whether it's doing the garden, DIY or just trying to vaguely get on top of the housework. People keep telling me I should get a cleaner, and maybe they are right, but it just seems so appallingly middle class. However, the real proof that I am getting old is that I quite enjoyed the day- just pottering round on my own getting things sorted. I do like being out in the garden. I should just stop fighting it and give in to being middle aged.

(My garden, but taken in the autumn before I'd done much to it.)

Being a wife

2007-02-13T16:55:00.000Z

On Sunday at church, one of my friends asked me whether I would be interested in a Bible study course for some married girls in the church about marriage and how we are all getting on with it. She asked me to bring the benefit of my experience, as I will be the longest married in the group. (It will be our 5th wedding anniversary this year.) Probably sounds like a bit of a cheesy idea, but I think it's a good idea to reasess these things from time to time and look at the foundations of a good marriage over again with some supportive friends. I agreed that I would like to be involved, but just thinking about it has set me off wondering how good I am at being a wife. The best book I read about marriage on our wedding preparation course was "The Mystery of Marriage" by Mike Mason. Bit highbrow, but a lot of interesting and good stuff about learning to put another person before yourself etc - can't remember all the details now - should probably buy the book and read it again. Just started thinking that I spend so much of the time at the moment being tired and a bit needy that I probably don't very often put mr me's needs first. Not helped by the fact that he is normally fairly undemanding himself. But surely I could be more creative in making him feel loved and special. To be completely honest, I normally spend more of the time thinking and daydreaming about what he might do for me, what he has and hasn't done recently to show me he loves me, rather than considering what his needs might be. We are both good at some stuff in marriage - we always have a date night once a week, we don't argue much and mostly in a non-destructive way, we are good at regular hugs and stuff. Think that this group will be good and helpful, but how much of a good example I am as a wife... I'm not sure at all.

talking for a living

2007-02-09T17:39:00.000Z

Psychiatry so far is a little bit like falling into thick treacle. Have had to slow my brain right down so it doesn't particularly expect me to be doing something all the time. As I had been warned it is a completely different pace of life. But maybe it needs to be so you have time to process and deal with the volume of heartbreak or craziness that can come out of just one patient when you ask them everything about their life, which is pretty much what you have to do to take a psychiatric history. I know craziness is not a very politically correct word to use and I'm sure that sometime soon I will be saying "this person is suffering from paranoid delusions with a formal thought disorder due to drug-induced psychosis" with the best of them, but just now my immediate gut reaction seems to be "wow, this person is really mad". Think I will enjoy it, certain I will enjoy having more time for my life outside of work. I can even do my on-calls from home! Hoorah for being able to sleep in my own bed with mr me and just going in if I'm needed!

Has been wintry weather this week - snowed yesterday and there's a severe weather warning out again tonight, which has meant that me and my sister have cancelled plans to drive down and see my grandad in Hertfordshire this weekend. Maybe not strictly necessary, but I think he would have worried a lot about our journey. Much more so than if one of our husbands was driving us, I suspect. But then Grandpa is 89, so I suppose I may overlook his old-fashioned attitudes and not mind. Especially as mr me tends to be a much more confident driver than me, so I suppose he is right in a way. Anyway, we will rearrange to go down and see him soon. Will be nice to have a weekend with no active plans. Mr me had got used to the idea of having a weekend on his own, so perhaps I will go round to my sisters' and watch TV and drink wine...

rhinovirus

2007-02-06T16:48:00.000Z

Well, I had a horrible cold over the weekend. Was feeling quite proud of myself for making it though the winter so far without one, especially considering I have been working in general practice, with a minimum of 3 people per day trying to persuade me that they need antibiotics for their cold. Came down with it suddenly and badly though, spending the first half of the weekend in agony with sinus pain and unable to sleep, and the second half sounding like Nina Simone, but not in a good way. Recovered rapidly just in time for work Monday - doh!

Felt guilty about being ill because this was the weekend we hired a floor sander to create a lovely wooden floor in our back bedroom, and meant that mr me (as he shall henceforth be known) ended up doing all the work. He thought the machine was too heavy for me anyway really, so I sat around helplessly mopping my nose and stuffing decongestants down my throat while he manfully pushed power tools around in his safety googles and ear protection. Didn't quite manage to get the edges done though, so some hands and knees work with some sandpaper and a block may be in order. (by me - I'm not going to make him do that, seeing as the whole affair was my idea).

Had also booked to go and see Sleeping Beauty by the St Petersburg ballet at the Alhambra in Bradford with my sister, and couldn't really cancel having paid for tickets, so I went, and probably deeply annoyed the people next to me with my explosive nose-blowing. Enjoyed the ballet, but was probably a bit more detatched than I would normally have been.

Left work today - took in some cakes and fruit to say thank you and presents for my trainer. Everybody was very nice saying goodbye to me and I deeply enjoyed throwing away large quantities of useless memos and drug company promotions, but was sad to leave. and found the whole thing a bit tiring. So there is an update on my not-very-exciting life.

Moving on...

2007-02-01T15:13:00.000Z

One of the things I find difficult about being a junior doctor is the changing jobs. Just to explain my current training scheme... I started it in Feb 2006 and it lasts for 3 years, involving six 6 month posts. 3 are in hospitals, 2 in general practice and one half and half. So far I have done a job in A+E and am just coming to the end of my first general practice job. Next Wednesday (it's always a Wednesday - I'm not sure why) I shall start my new post in Psychiatry in a nearby hospital.

There are some good things about this system, but quite a few bad ones as well.

Good things:

you don't feel stuck in a rut, and you keep learning new things.
it makes you adaptable and better at getting on with people
no problem seems quite as bad - eg you find a colleague difficult to deal with, you can say "oh well, I'll never have to see him/her again in a few months"

Bad things

All the forms!!! Every 6 months I fill out a CRB form, a wages form, an occupational health form, a car parking form, a name badge form, and I have to show up with the same collection of important documents. This time I can't find my passport - not a good sign
it is unsettling. my wages, my rota, my journey time all change every 6 months, not to mention what I do all day at work. this time my wages are going down. boo.
because you know from the start, and so does everybody else, that you are only there for 6 months, you just don't invest emotionally in the job and the place as much as you would if it was permanent. and likewise people don't see you as a long term colleague or potential friend in quite the same way that they might if you were staying around. In hospital maybe the consultant never quite learns your name properly, or you don't fight quite so hard against the stupidity of the rota because as above, you know you only have to put up with it a bit longer by the time you've realised how rubbish it is. Or as in my current job in general practice, you're working with a team of people who know they'll probably be together the rest of their working lives. They know each others' families, habits, they remember weddings and births, mishaps, illnesses etc. And although they've all been kind and friendly to me, it's not the same and you can feel the slight (very slight) distance. It makes me sad and means maybe I don't expect to find lifelong friends at work. I think some people are better than me at this, maybe they live more in the moment, invest emotionally even though they know it's only for a short time, and are more likely to see colleagues outside of work and stay in touch afterwards. Maybe it is partly to do with the fact that I find initiating a friendship a little bit difficult. It's that step between "I like you and we chat about stuff and get on well" and "you are my friend and not just a colleague", that I find difficult to get over. Whether this is because of all the job changing, or whether I'm just using that as an excuse for my own hesitancy and insecurity I'm not sure.

Anyway, that was far too long for the content of a bullet point! I will be sad to leave this job - the people are all nice. Particularly enjoyable to rant along with the other doctors about the state of the nhs, the patients, hospital medicine - everybody except us really - at lunchtimes. Have got to know a few patients - some see me regularly as "their doctor" and I've never had that before. Have got used to finding out what happens to people instead of them vanishing off into the ether and never seeing them again, which is what happens in hospital medicine. Anyway, I could happily work here for longer. However, psychiatry sounds like it will be fairly relaxing, I had some good feedback from my GP trainer today, so there's not too much to grumble about. I can cope with moving on.

nonsense

2007-01-31T16:44:00.000Z

want to escape
into the blue
out of the hurly
and hullabaloo

away from the ceaseless
kerfuffle and blare;
the bustle and burly
and tearing of hair

want to be idle
want to be free
to leisurely languidly
lie by the sea

with nothing to do
for a year and a day
oh why can't my dreaming
vacate me away?

An average day in General Practice

2007-01-29T18:50:00.000Z

Today I felt good. I saw a patient today with a problem which has been present for a couple of weeks and has been referred non-urgently. The problem has been getting worse since then, and is now significantly affecting his functioning. He and his family are very worried and asked if they could get the appointment any quicker. So I rang the (very helpful) phoneline for the speciality involved, and they arranged me an appointment for tomorrow morning. One of the rare occasions when you feel really proud of the NHS. So now the patient thinks I'm wonderful, and more importantly, his problems and his anxiety will soon be resolved.

Today I also felt bad. In my one hour tutorial with one of the GPs at my practice we did an in depth analysis of a case I saw on call just over a weekend and handled pretty badly. Basically I allowed myself to be pressurised into calling an ambulance for a patient when that wasn't the most appropriate thing to do. Going through your mistakes in detail for an hour is a very good learning experience. It doesn't make you feel very good about yourself though.

I saw 17 patients today and they all made me feel different things. Some made me feel sad for them, some made me feel uncomfortable, some made me want to bang my head against a wall, some made me confused, some made me feel like I'd done something good, some like I could have handled things better. Some made me feel I wished I could have got to know them better. Most of these things I now wouldn't remember feeling if I wasn't deliberately trying to remember. The general effect of all this is to send me home feeling a bit drained and with occasional moodswings. The ones I remember most are the ones I was a bit worried about for whatever reason. Sometimes if I try to remember all I've done in a day my head feels like it's in a fog. I expect this will only get worse when I go to 10 minute appointments instead of 15.

Anyway, why am I sitting at work at ten past seven typing this when I've only just finished my paperwork? I am going home to my lovely husband who is making me tea. Then I have to see whether the floor in the back bedroom is ready to be sanded at the weekend. Hey-ho!

Temporary Escape

2007-01-22T22:56:00.000Z

Enjoyed a deeply relaxing long weekend away with friends this weekend just gone, and return to Leeds feeling very refreshed. There were four of us girls who know each other from first year of uni, me, Mad Mede a and two other medics. Husbands of all four were also present. As Mad Medea kindly arranged the date, location and all the catering, the rest of us only had to turn up and have fun. A bit strange to realise how much we have all grown up since first year as we chatted about DIY, organic food, marriage etc. Was great to see all of them, especially MM and husband, as they most unfairly moved to Gloucestershire last year and I haven't really seen them properly since their wedding. Craziness of life and recent house-buying has meant I haven't really kept up very well with the others in Leeds either though.

The other 2 doctor/women are my good friends from my year at university, one is now an SHO in Obs and Gynae, and the other is in general practice as part of her FY2 year. Both are struggling with the nightmare that is Modernising Medical Careers. For those not familiar with medicalspeak this is the system that means that despite both having settled lives and owning houses in Leeds, they now have to apply to the whole of Yorkshire (a pretty wide area) for their choice of training scheme, and then either to another county for the same speciality or to a whole different choice of career in Yorkshire as their second and third options. For my friend in O+G, the fact that she is currently employed at the same hospital for the same consultants as she would be for the job she wants cannot be taken into account, she will only get that job if she's better on paper than the other candidates who want it, despite the fact that the department know her and know she would do a good job. This is the kind of uncertainty that is ruling the lives of most junior doctors in the country right now. I am one of the lucky ones because I'm already on the GP training scheme, which will take me through until I am a qualified GP, provided I pass my exams.

We also all discussed our struggles with the responsibility that medicine can be, something I know I have been finding stressful lately as I get further on and make more decisions for myself. When something goes wrong and a patient dies it seems impossible to avoid torturing yourself with the "what if.." questions. What if I'd just checked that? What if I'd just done this? Would it have made any difference? Hindsight makes it hard to see whether what you did at the time was reasonable.

Enough of the doom and gloom anyway! We all relaxed and enjoyed ourselves and temporarily put worries on hold. It was a beautiful place that we stayed - a large converted barn near Ashbourne, called Billy's Bothy. Quite luxurious, with a wood burning stove, under floor heating and romantic cottage-like bedrooms with en suite. I begged for myself and Husband to have the en suite with a bath, as we have only got a shower room in our house at the moment, and greatly enjoyed wallowing in hot water for protracted periods of time. We shamelessly over-ate delicious food, drank wine, went for wintry walks, fed the crazy chickens and played games and watched movies in the evenings. Yesterday morning we all left, but myself and Husband went for another short walk in Dovedale on our way home, which was really beautiful. Amazing how much more relaxed I tend to feel when I've actually been away than when I just spend the weekend at home. Feels much longer, and gives the feeling of temporary escape from everyday life.

Diamonds

2007-01-17T15:56:00.000Z

I don't think I'm getting my recommended daily allowance of diamonds. I've just been in a (not very exciting) practice meeting which was held in the patient's waiting room, and on the cover of an old "Happy" magazine, I saw the headline "Win a year's supply of diamonds!" Intrigued to know how much a year's supply of diamonds actually was, I looked inside and found that it was £1600 worth. I'm definitely not getting enough of them. I had better see somebody about it quickly otherwise I may develop chronic softness and lack of sparkle due to my diamond deficiency. However, on reflection, maybe I will postpone my official complaint until everyone in the world has their recommended daily allowance of food.

First Post

2007-01-15T08:56:00.000Z

Having been inspired by reading blogs of some of my friends I have decided to write one of my own. Used to keep a diary, but this is much more satisfying to the ego, as if I ever manage to say something clever, someone might possibly read it.

This is not intended to be a medical blog, as a) everything has to be completely anonymised according to certain rules and even so, I’d hate for any patients to recognise themselves, and b) I’d end up talking about the NHS and that would just raise my blood pressure far too much, instead of being therapeutic. Frustration may occasionally overspill into a general rant about patients or healthcare system, but that’s not the main thing I want to write about.

I’ve called the blog doctor/woman, because that seems like the main tension in my life at the moment. Sometimes it seems like when you’re a doctor you don’t feel allowed to actually be a person any more. You have to be a reflective listener, non-judgemental and professional at all times. Sometimes I get home after a day at work and start acting insane for an hour or so, dancing around and saying stupid things because I’ve been so sensible and professional all day. I’m not saying I think doctors shouldn’t be professional or non-judgemental, but it can be a strain. It starts to make you feel maybe you can’t have your own opinion any more and you can’t decide to run down the street shouting “I’m a weapon of mass destruction” and waving an inflatable carrot. And maybe you can’t. Maybe part of the job, particularly the job of a GP, is becoming a respected member of society. Which is why maybe I need an alter ego who is allowed to be a romantic, a bit of a dreamer, someone who gets excited and rants about things, someone who writes poetry, over-reacts, cries, loves surprises and occasionally binges on chocolate. In short, a woman…