The last two weeks have been manic, with Tim on nights one week and me on nights the next. Nights aren't so bad once you've adjusted - it's the adjusting, and also the anticipating that's so bad; wondering what's going to happen. Nothing very bad happened, except one patient who started bleeding and then wouldn't stop bleeding. That was Quite Bad. But he did stop in the end so that was Fine. And he is Fine and I am Fine and we are all Fine.
Hurrah!
Tim and I have been like ships in the night though, passing each other and only socialising at dinner, so last weekend it was very exciting to have each other for the whole day and the whole night. It definitely makes you appreciate what you've got, and how lucky I am go to home and have the person I like most in the world there to spend the whole evening with and go to sleep next to and wake up next to, almost all the time. It makes me extra glad that we linked applications because imagining driving 5 hours to see someone special makes me extremely sad, and that's what would have happened if we hadn't linked. Tragedy.
But last weekend, at the end of the two weeks of nights, we went to Sheffield for Simon's surprise birthday party. It was a massive surprise, though Tim and I were late fo rthe surprising part so missed the bit where Simon did not recognise all of his friends and thought that a group of strangers had accidentally mistaken him for someone else and was terribly embarrassed he had walked into someone else's surprise birthday party. It was lovely to catch up with the others and hear about their experiences. Simon works in a DGH so tiny that they don't even have a blood gas machine - to take a blood gas they have to ring the porter, who has to come and stand next to them while they take it (no pressure guys), and then sprint across to the OTHER HOSPITAL where they have a blood gas machine. In the meantime you have to phone the lab so the lab are SUPER READY to receive the blood gas IMMEDIATELY.... and you hope that not all the oxygen has dissolved out of it before you measure it. Tom told us about the patient with a potassium 0,1mmol below the 'action line' he was asked to treat. He prescribed 'a banana, STAT.' We all compared how many times we'd cried already (the girls were averaging at 3 - the boys at a measly 1.) It was really good to talk and share experiences and feel a little bit better about the bad times, as well as happy about the good.
Then we ate tapas until we nearly exploded.
Sunday, we were meant to sit at home and do some work but instead organised our Spanish holiday (so exciting!) and started checking up prices on the Trans Siberian express.....travelling dreams, really. We're going to have to scrimp and save this year. I realised that we were planning to spend well over £10,000 together travelling - what a sensible older person might say re: mortgages and savings about this! But the idea of saving it and putting it towards a house is somehow awful. Maybe I will regret this in times to come...but at least my children will be living with lots of interesting travelling stories. And, er, perhaps only one bedroom between the 4 of them.
Right, time to pack for our round England trip! Starting tomorrow, we're driving to York, Worcester, Bristol, Bath, Bognor, Oxford, and back to Newcastle. Owning a car has been the funnest thing ever....and if you're on the itinerary, drop me a line, see if we can arrange a time to visit :-)
love
Connie
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