Polly's Exhaustion On The Other Side of The Fence

Rather than publish one great big long post, I'm posting two today - in an effort to make up for the abuse & shameful neglect Polly's Peri-wrinkles & Piercings has suffered over the past year! Actually, it's so that I can blow off a little bit more steam about the adventures I've had through recent life...

When it comes to basic or complicated patient care, I can keep up. Care is care and the basics are the basics after all and patients and relatives always need a sympathetic ear. Listening and observation skills were the mainstay of my training, alongside the ability to record and report, which is interesting in the light of the experience I had last Thursday upon my return to work!

The flush of health and clear skin were put there for my own edification courtesy of this girl's best friend Estee Lauder. I felt rotten going in in the first place and the mask I'd carefully applied at 6am wasn't wasted, my hair wasn't too bad either which is just as well as I found myself redeployed into the MAU - ugh! It wasn't as bad as expected, thankfully the unit was relatively quiet and I had the support of a fantastic student, attendent and clinical manager until 4.30pm which of course is when things went pear shaped...

With one patient to transfer, via CT (that was the easy one) and one foreign gentleman and his translator to discharge it got interesting. I haven't written a discharge summary in over twenty years and couldn't find the appropriate place to record my words! Having failed to locate it I had to ask for help, scanning a couple of other charts hadn't helped at all, so imagine my embarrassment at having to ring & to ask where to record it!! Oh how I blushed...

All I can say is that thanks to the very nice lady I spoke to and a very nice NCHD I was able to lock the doors in the full knowledge that all the beds were empty and ready to be refilled the following day. It's a crazy situation, but we all survived with our respective skins intact and lived to tell the tale - apart from a colleague who had to stay back and wait for me to return to my own department to provide cover till six o'clock. I got back at 5.35pm.

Today I spent some time on the other side of the fence, running from doctors surgery to outpatient clinic and waiting patiently in both. Did you know that's why we're called patients? Because we need to have a ridiculous amount of patience to survive the system! And I did, for today at least...

I'm tired, probably exhausted emotionally and physically having slept for a couple of hours on the sofa in my trusty old (smelly) sleeping bag. I forgot to take my meds last night, until it was too late and if I'd have taken them then there would have been a lot more than four people in front of me in the waiting room. As it was I'm ashamed to say that I was probably quite rude to the queue jumper who would have made five, he was gracious about it and accepted my apology. Morto, as they say in Dublin!

My lovely partner in life snores at the best of times, but last night given the fact that I wasn't sedated to within an inch of my own life was the worst night spent in his company ever. I honestly believe that he was trying to smother himself in his sleep last night, it was the worst example of suspected sleep apnoea ever, it got through the pillow and the ear plugs. Finally, having migrated to the relative peace of the sitting room Iwas rudely woken by a 17 year old unceremoneously pulling the damned ear plug out of my ear at 4.15am to see if I was okay! I was nice, honest.

Two hours later the 14 year old did much the same thing with a chocolate biscuit. I managed to refuse  politely. Just...