For Judith

take care

x

1983 revisited

The Main 1829 Building which had changed very little when I started my training
(On my very first shift I remember walking through the main entrance which led into the dormitory of a long stay ward called Acton.....)

I completed my Psychiatric Nurse Training way back in 1986 when I was just 24.
The times then were changing....the asylum was more or less a thing of the past and the huge, self contained Hospitals , such as the Deva Hospital on the outskirts of Chester already had started to shed its populations of institutionalized patients and staff back into the community.
Our nursing group (Known as Sep 83) was a small one. It comprised of only 7 students, all of us overseen by an inspirational tutor, the fey,camp and greatly respected Leslie Brint.

The class of '83.  From left to right Me, Sandra, Steven, Mr Brint, Paula, Noirin and Mike
Judith was in the Isle Of Man when this photo was taken

 During our training, not only did I became close to the scousers of the group ( the warm and laid back Sandra, foul mouthed comic Paula and heart throb Mike) but to the group's "baby", a country girl from the Isle of Man called Judith, who was still in  her teens.


Big hearted and a  little naive ,Judith blossomed in nursing residence life, and after we all qualified and went our separate ways, we always kept in touch, in that sporadic, erratic way, old friends sometimes have a tendency to do.


Its been nearly ten years since we met up. A  brief comment on my blog the other day rekindled our friendship, as Judith said she was staying over on the  Wirral. for a few weeks and could I meet up with her at some stage.
The message and subsequent email was chatty and bouncy enough, but being a nurse, I suspected rightly as it turned out that Judith was over from the Isle of Man to attend treatment over at Clatterbridge's Oncology Hospital., one of the leading cancer centres in the UK
I know it sounds a little selfish, but with losing Constance on Sunday and looking after my brother all day Tuesday, the prospect of meeting up with Judith today filled me with some ambivalence, but as it turned out,our meeting was filled with gossip, laughter and 25 years of catch ups

I picked her up from Clatterbridge Hospital and we drove to the picturesque  Parkgate village on the Dee Estuary.,a place that we used to take patients out for the day, when we were student nurses.
We ate ice cream, walked the length of the Promenade , talked and laughed and talked some more.
I am a year off being 50 and I felt as though I was 21 again!

Concrete mixers

Eirlys with my buff cockerel

My friend Eirlys did me a lot of good today.

She asked me about Constance , but did so in a matter-of-fact way which didnt upset me

She diverted me from my poor mood 

And offered me her concrete mixer to mix my poultry wormer and layers pellets in.(believe it or not she has worked out a formula that coats every pellet with the correct amount of medication!)
As Delia would say....

Start One clean concrete mixer

Add 25 kilos of food

Drizzle in 2 litres of oil from the hot fat fryer

add a splash of 20 quids worth of wormer

mix well

laugh a little while you are doing it

and serve...........
enjoy!

Lady Bracknell

The old kitchen sofa looks very empty this morning and the house is strangely quiet..
The pecking order between the dogs has been subtly changed yet again, and this morning they are subdued and quiet as they lie together on the lounge sofa. Their stillness is more a product of my mood than a show of theirs

Thanks to all that left a comment on Sunday's post, I have not read them all, but I will do ......
People are very kind, they say very nice things , but at times like these, as Chris would testify to, I hate fussing of any kind and am best left alone, to be busy..
Businesslike is good......
This may surprise some...after all old queens who blog are supposed to need sycophantic comments daily don't they?...No,not always they do....
So please no more "you're a nice person".....comments...I am no nicer , sweeter or angelic than anyone else on this planet.....believe me! and today I could quite easily strangle the first person who offers up a platitude or a wrong word...


We have now lost three dogs over 6 years. This seems a ridiculous number when you think about it......and this morning I am reminded of Lady Bracknell's comment in The Importance of Being Ernest

"To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness."

Finlay died from a fast growing Brain Tumour, Maddie from Vet incompetence and now Constance from cardiac failure.....all on paper have been unforeseen and unavoidable events (for us as owners that is ) but some small part of me feels as though we have done something wrong in all this.....and that feels shitty

Don't tell me that thought is wrong...please dont, I dont need the reasurrance.....I just feel what I am feeling this morning..and that's guilt

You Give Your Heart to a dog to tear

I have blogged before about fate, and how it throws you a curved ball out from left field when you are least expecting it.
This morning I was banging on  comically about Constance's flatulence....blissfully unaware that I would be attempting to resuscitate her in the road outside the Church gates only an hour or so later.
We were returning from our usual morning walk when Constance stopped short pulling all of the other dogs to a standstill. She looked up at me briefly with an expression of mild surprise, coughed  and then collapsed.


I went into nurse mode.
She had stopped breathing and I couldn't hear or feel a heartbeat.
Somehow I blew into her mouth and compressed her chest, and after a minute or so she coughed again, waving her big paws weakly.
I felt her heart beat briefly , but moments later it stopped again.
A woman stopped her car to help.
I gave her the other dogs to hold, and tried to shake Constance back to life once more.
But she didn't move again. She had been with us just 10 months


One minute she was here, the next she had gone. It was as simple and as  final as that.


We buried her in a quiet corner of  the allotment, with all of those platitudes of "she had a good life when she was with us" going around and around in my head.
But when I later went to feed the pigs, I pictured her "smiling" with that stupid one tooth sticking out of her fat wide mouth  and I sat down in the long grass and bawled like a baby.

Sunday Morning

The dogs love Sunday Mornings.
After walks and while I am cooking breakfast, three of the four bounce upstairs to clamber into bed with Chris like children do with their parents on Christmas day. Constance, with his great weight (too much for our Marks and Spencer bed) and rather lax bladder control , always remains in the kitchen, a fact which she is not troubled by. 
The effort of climbing the steep cottage staircase remains just that little bit daunting for a 25 kilo bulldog with a flatulence problem........every step a fart, as it were!


The gossip around the village at the moment is the "changing of hands" of the pub. Suddenly Lee, the acting manager has up-sticks and left and in his place a new young family with children have arrived.to fly the "Crown" flag in these troubled economic times

We were told that the food served was excellent pub grub, and so like many of the other villagers we have made the effort and booked a table for last night.
The restaurant was full when we arrived ( a very good sign), the young wife , who does "front of house" duties was charming and professional and there was something quite valiant in the way she she outlined just how much she and her husband wanted to "make a go" out of the business in this climate where breweries are draining the very lifeblood out of their landlords.
We had a nice meal
and wished them well for the future.
Local readers... try the Crown out for yourselves...and be a good citizen 

An Easy Life

Intensive care has a pace and an order which is rather unique.

Even when a unit is busy, the work always seems structured, calm and for the want of a better word discliplined.

That is the nature of the beast.

The unit is roughly organised into a horse shoe shape. The critically ill patients situated on the outside of the shoe, the most senior nurse occupying the "heel" position,  a vantage where he or she can survey the "workers" with eyes and an all overseeing monitor.

Each bed is allocated a trained member of staff, who takes charge of that bed for a 13 hour shift. 

The bed spaces,monitors, pumps, ventilators,haemofiltration machines and the like are that nurse's domain, and pride,ego and peer pressure dictate tidiness, order and calmness in your own fifteen foot space.

Help is always only feet away. . More often than not the patient is sedated and compliant (though not always)

and terrified at doing anything wrong, family and friends generally are in awe of the proceedings and remain manageable and well supported.

There are huge stressors in this claustrophobic environment...but like a duck, swimming on a lake......everything on the surface is calm.

Last night I was asked to help out on an acute elderly admission ward.

30 patients. Two staff members. The walking senile...the incontinent, the confused, the slow, the distressed, the demanding and the needy.

Welcome to the real world.

As one bottom was cleaned and checked and the sheets and blankets arranged to help with a good night's sleep, another bottom needed sorting. The man with Alzheimer's had to be retrieved from sorting the linen room out, and the lady in bed four was late for her iv antibiotics.

Three buzzers rang out , unanswered as we turned and cleaned a stroke patient in his side room, and as I tried to locate the sluice and fresh bedding, another buzzer sounded, with a shrill beeeb beeb...bloody beeb

The two full time staff, a slightly harassed but cheerful scouser and an unflappable Filipino,  were uncomplaining  and hard working.....they were also resigned to the fact this night was generally "the norm" in our modern, stretched and flagship nhs, however, by working together all of the jobs eventually got done, and by midnight some order was restored.

One shift a week on Intensive care!

Bloody hell..how lucky am I?

Fairy Tales

I absolutely LOVE cinematic fairy tales

This clip from the early 1990s television series Ally McBeal... was pure slush!

But having said this.....I have to admit that it always made me smile.....especially when Ally walked through the deserted Boston Streets at the end of each episode
(my second fav scene was always the staff of the law firm having early evening drinks at the suddenly busy nightclub every weeknight!

How many out there remember it?