First day back...

...was yesterday, but I had such a huge headache after it that I just got in and slumped on the sofa. I feel more able to rant now, and will do so numerically.

1. The uni has put on a park and ride since all the streets near it have been turned into residents parking. The traffic wardens were practically orgasmic yesterday. Fine, whatever. But, as this is my uni, they have made a complete mess of it. The pick up stop is in the middle of an industrial estate with vey poor lighting. I'm not looking forward to standing there at 8am in the middle of winter. And, it goes the stupidest route imaginable; it took us 20 minutes to travel a mile. I could have walked quicker, and might well do next time. What they should have done is, instead of ploughing millions of pounds into a new building that has no discernable point (not that we would know, since students aren't allowed in), they should have taken the land and the cash and built a multistorey car park on it. Bastards.

2. Within five minutes I remembered why I hate everyone else in my cohort, bar about 4 people. They are thick, and loud, and I hate them. If I ever have to work with them, I'm gonna make sure I get the keys to the drugs trolley and will keep them permanently heavily medicated. The NMC can do their worst; it won't be as bad as having to work with the useless twats.

3. I'm sick of spending hours being taught useless crap and no time at all on anything useful. Put it this way; would you rather your nurse was able to reflect on her practice using a double-loop learning model? Or would you rather she knew what the hell the drugs she was giving you were and whether the headache was a usual side effect or, say, potential meningitis? The important stuff is done by self-directed learning, which wouldn't be so bad if they actually had a system for weeding out the people who just didn't learn it. But they don't. Next time you ask a nurse a question and she looks like she's making the answer up, it's because if she went to my uni, she is.

The worst part is that it was freshers week; 7000 new starters all trying to cram into the sports hall to get free tampons, and you can't walk three feet without a giant cigarette sticking an anti-smoking leaflet in your hand. It was hell.

Roll on next september.

Multiple Personalities

My usual routine on a morning is to get up, settle myself in front of Homes Under the Hammer* with a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive breakfast and begin checking my emails. It takes a while; at a recent count I realised I have eight email accounts, spread over three personas.

There's The Real Me (TRM), who has two email accounts with the uni, one with work, one with my internet provider, and others with Hotmail and Yahoo. I can't remember why; I think I set some up to give to companies I didn't want to talk to. They sometimes send me vouchers though, so I check them. I realise this completely defeats the purpose of having an address solely to be spammed. My internet provider just gave me one unasked for, which I ignored for several years until they started sending me letters that referred to emails they'd sent me. So now I have to check that one or risk incurring their wrath. Since the internet is my life, I cannot risk this.

Then there's Cellar Door, who has accounts with Mental Nurse and Google. She shares the Google account with another online persona, who will remain nameless as she uses it to write bad fanfiction**. She does not use it for any writing in the Mentalsphere, however, as she is trying to remain compartmentalised and hopefully, less confused. She is failing.

What I find odd is that each persona does kinda have their own personality. TRM is quite different from Cellar Door, and very different from Ms Fanfic, who is probably the least, erm, inhibited of the three. Yes, there are some things even Cellar Door doesn't talk about, for fear of completely alienating her readers. TRM only usually talks about them when drunk, and only in highly select company.

There are, at present, only two people in the whole wide world who know both about Cellar Door and Ms Fanfic. Mr Door is one, and he's not allowed to read Ms Fanfic's stuff. He only found out about her recently, after I got obsessed with a story and he started wondering why I was ignoring him (again) in favour of the laptop; he briefly made fun of me before I pointed out that he is a camera uber-geek and that he really isn't in a position to be making fun of anyone. The other one is a friend, who has her own geeky proclivities and so has been supportive. She is also the only person who get's to see the near-full extent of TRM's hormonal angst, loathe as I am to introduce Mr Door to The Nutter Within.

TNW has been quite active lately, since I started on the new anti-baby pills; I had a slight attack of hysterical laughter that turned into a crying jag whilst on my own in the car the other day, all prompted by an apparently innocuous thought about a book I suddenly wanted to read. Fuck knows what that was all about.

Anyway, I'm back at uni tomorrow, so will settle back into my uni persona. This one comes across as quiet and shy; I shocked one bloke the other day when I casually mentioned an act of violence I was planning on committing on the dickhead at the bar. Apparently I don't come across as being the violent type. Clearly my cunning disguise is effective.

They do say it's always the quiet ones...




*Yes, I sleep late; and?
**Yes, I'm a complete geek; and?

200th Post

Stolen from here.

200 posts. Feckin' hell.

Big huge thank you to everyone who takes the time to read my nonsense - you guys rock. Srsly.

Here's to another 200 before the NMC catch up with me...

ps; ok, it's not really my proper 200th post, since there's another 30 or so lurking somewhere on the innernetz from before the big paranoid delete of last year. But any excuse to celebrate...

Under investigation

No, not me. Not yet, anyway. But I was talking to a nurse the other day who has been giving a statement to a committee investigating a patient he nursed twelve years ago. Seriously, twelve years. The patient went on to kill someone, and clearly they are very keen to find out what happened. He said the majority of his answers were I don't know, I don't remember. I can't always remember patients I've worked with 12 weeks ago, let alone anything I was doing when I was 15.

I'm still recovering from the night shift/wedding fair. My body clock is completely confused and I'm getting the urge to sleep at odd times whilst lying awake all night. On the plus side, we have hot water and heating - however long it may last. I may have a read in the bath tonight. I'm reading Iain Banks' new book, Transition, and will have to re-read most of what I got through on the night shift because it turns out it's not the kind of plot you can follow at 4am.

In even more good news, I've finished my last essay of my second year. I'm not convinced it's any good, but I'll settle for finished. And, except for one sneaky class, we have an extra week off whilst the freshers get settled. Of course, one of the reasons I was so keen to get back to uni was that we only have classes 3 days a week anyway :o) Yay! More time to...erm...do shifts at work....crap.


ps - Sara, if you're reading this, check your email!

Huh...? Wha...?

I figure I've had 2.5 hours sleep in the last 36. I did a night shift last night, so as of this morning I'd been up for about 24 hours straight. Then I went to bed, had a serious of very odd dreams (fish were apparently swimming about in my duvet) which then crossed over into semi-waking dreams (whereby I started to try to undo the duvet to look for the fish) and then went into full-on night terror territory (thinking that I was going to flood the bedroom unless I held the duvet up in a particular way and that Mr Door would *literally* kill me if this happened). It sounds funny, but I was terrified. The flooding fear was there when I woke up an hour later and took about 10 minutes for me to shake off. I hate my brain. Can't even blame it on the codeine (which is the usual culprit) because I hadn't had any. Clearly the stress over the plumbing situation is having an effect.

Anyway, I would have tried to get more sleep except that I had stupidly agreed to go to a wedding fayre with my mum. She's a little obsessed right now, for some reason; Mr Door proposed 2 years ago and we still haven't set a date, so I have a feeling she's concerned about her health failing before she gets a chance to to the mother/daughter wedding stuff. She had me trying on wedding dresses the other day. I was skeptical, but in the end I had to resist the urge to do a runner whilst trying one on; I'd have gone for it, but the door was locked and I was wearing too-big shoes and an unattatched veil/tiara combo. I doubt I could have squeezed into my car in the dress, so my escape would have consisted of me hobbling down the street, clinging on to the veil whilst being chased by two irate shop assistants.

This afternoon, however, I just couldn't get myself worked up over chair covers and floral centerpieces. I don't want all that stuff, and I certainly don't want to pay for it. Mum is very generously buying my dress, but the whole 'father of the bride pays' thing has never been an option. I want a small but nice ceremony, and a cheap evening do. I have no intention of starting married life in debt. But things seem to have a habit of getting away from you, and next thing you're trying to think of 20 more people to invite so you can justify hiring the bigger, nicer room, which means you then have to feed the bastards. This is why I'm putting off thinking about it.

I wonder if I can get away with a buffet of prawn cocktail crisps and some mini sausage rolls...

The three scariest words a student nurse can hear...

Fitness to Practice.

Today was my first proper day off in weeks. As in, a day where I had nothing planned; no lying builders/plumbers/roofers/electricians coming in to break my house, no appointments, no places I had to be, and no Mr Door hovering to make me feel guilty about not doing my essay. Proper, honest-to-God me time.

So I get up about lunch time. Because I can, goddammit. I potter about, have a cup of tea and a biscuit, and decide to check my emails. I see I have one from the university. I am filled with a sense of dread. Rightly so, as it turns out. One sentence jumps out at me and my heart tries to climb out of my body using my oesophagus as some sort of rope ladder.

blah blah blah fitness to practice procedure blah blah blah

Shitshitshitshitshit.

My first thought is...Who did I kill?

I take a deep breath and force myself to read it again.

Turns out, I didn't kill anyone. Thank fuck.

Turns out, my tutor didn't check his emails and is accusing me of not replying to a previous email relating to attendence at uni. See also this post.

Because he didn't check his emails, he was threatening to initiate fitness to practice procedures against me.

Luckily, being the cynical and paranoid person I am, and being fully aware of how useless the uni is, I had saved my previous correspondance and CC'd various other departments in when I initially replied. So it was sorted quickly and I got a full and frank apology for being undeservedly accused of misconduct I was grudgingly informed that I did not need to attend the scheduled meeting.

After which, I was able to finally stop cursing and return my heart to it's rightful place, although it took another hour to stop the palpitations.

Kinda put a dent in my relaxing me time. I might as well do my essay now.

Facebook as therapy

Aethelread has done a very interesting post about Twitter and it got me thinking...about Facebook. Of course.

In my real life, I am on Facebook. I don't have many friends. (Altogether now...awww....) It's my own fault; I'm an antisocial bitch. I'm comfortable with that. Plus, my sense of humour tends to scare away a lot of potential friends, being as it tends towards the, erm, dark side.

However, like most people, I have many more Facebook friends than I do 'real' friends. I have not gotten as far as adding every person I've every met yet, but a lot of them are 'work' friends, or people I went to school with 15 years ago and about whom I am sufficiently nosey enough to warrant accepting a friend request. Facebook is primarily a tool by which I stalk people.

Despite this, being on Facebook has resulted in one of the greatest improvements to my mental health since the time I got prescribed diazepam. I'll explain.

I have an overdeveloped sense of guilt. I feel guilty over everything. In work, it means I am ridiculously conscientious; if I say I'm going to do something, I have to do it or I suffer for it. I lie awake at night feeling sick. It's a bit much, really, and not very healthy, particularly given the unpredictable nature of the job which means that sometimes, you just can't get everything done. I end up begging the next shift to please, make sure you do this, because I said I would and I don't want to let anyone down. Anyway. The guilt thing crosses over to my personal life. If I upset someone (which I do, because of the bitch bit), I feel bad about it. Like, forever. I still feel bad over stuff that happened 15 years ago. Particularly with Boys, some of whom I was frankly evil to during my youthful exploits. Which is where Facebook comes in.

I used to have horribly sleepless nights over my exes. I would lie awake going over all the awful things I had ever said or done to them...over and over again. I even felt bad about the ones who I had actually not done anything wrong to; my most significant relationship pre-Mr Door was a bloke I just fell out of love with, but who took it very hard when we split. I heard on the grapevine that he was pretty messed up over it. God knows why, since I was hardly up for any girlfriend of the year awards. Anyway, a few months ago my sister added him on Facebook, and in a drunken haze of bravery I added him too. He accepted, we exchanged pleasantries and I suddenly started sleeping much better. Likewise the ex before that. It's amazing how much of my anxiety was tied up in feeling shit over past relationships, and how quickly it abated when I realised that (a) I didn't break them and (b) they don't completely hate me. Of course, there are still a couple (literally; I'm not a complete whore) who aren't on Facebook, but I feel much better for it.

And it had less of a waiting list than CBT, anyway.

Yay...

...officially finished my placement :o)

Final Q and A session went fine; uni woman turned up early (which doesn't make up for the stress of her forgetting, goddammit) and seemed impressed with some of my answers. Must have waffled enough to convince her I was competent somehow, anyway. So, just one utterly confusing essay to do before I'm a third year. As usual, we've had three differing sets of instructions from three dirrerent lecturers. Am going with the woman who is going to be marking it, although from prior experience there's no guarantees she won't contradict herself when she gets to it.

Otherwise, everything remains the same in the house. I have just bought a lot of books (escapism, most likely, to a world where the water is hot and I can touch things without getting dusty) and I've been doing some other, super-geeky type stuff that is also consuming important essay time. I have a few posts planned - nothing hugely interesting mind - that I hope to get round to when I have at least started the essay and so can blog without guilt....

Are you kidding me?

So, the meeting with my tutor to ascertain whether I had passed the placement...didn't happen. My tutor forgot about it.

She's always late, so we gave her an hour past when she was due. Then I rang her, but her phone was dead. So I emailed her, and she eventually emailed back saying...she forgot.

I have been stressed about this for a week. I didn't sleep last night. My mentor was on his days off but came in specially. This morning, I was almost throwing up with anxiety.

And she fucking forgot.

Today was my last day on placement, so I will have to come in during my weeks holiday to get signed off. Luckily I can't afford to go away, otherwise I'd have been screwed if I'd been out of the country. The shift was horrendously busy, and I spent the last few hours with a massive headache and feeling both pissed off and like crying. It wasn't the way I wanted it to end, really. On the plus side, some of the staff were really nice and I got some nice compliments. One of the patients gave me a hug. That made me want to cry again.

So I can't really relax yet, but I'm going to try to forget about it until wednesday, when we'll try again. I wish I could say I was surprised, but it's pretty much what I've come to expect from my uni. I have never met a more useless bunch of lazy, overpaid bastards. Lectures and seminars get cancelled without notice, emails don't get replied to, phones are never answered, messages aren't returned and they don't even turn up when they say they will. If this had been an isolated incident I might not be so bothered, but they just don't do their fucking jobs.

*Sigh* If I'd forgotten about it I'd have failed the damn placement.

I'm going to spend the weekend hammered. Before the electrician comes on monday to rip up the floorboards upstairs. And the plumber comes tuesday to rip out the downstairs ones.