Normality postponed (temporarily)

Ok, so the abject happiness I was expecting didn't happen. Nor did the discharge from mental health. So I have another two weeks before I am 'normal'. Kind of a probation period, according to K, to see how I get on without her support.

So far, so not good.

I cried on leaving the centre. Partly cos I absolutely adore K and I'll miss having our weekly chats. Partly cos, like, what the hell will I do with my Wednesday afternoons now?!

But mainly cos, once again, I am out in the big wide world with a handful of leaflets and a head full of psychobabble.

I sat in the car and screamed like a big wussy baby.

Then a song came on the radio that had so many happy memories. Laughing with my bro, A. Driving six hours with H to hear this sung live.

And it made me smile.

Despite the fact that the rain is coming down in blankets, not sheets. Despite the fact that there is a massive pile of ironing calling to me. Despite the fact I have to go back to work tomorrow and face the arsey manager again.

I'm still smiling.

Therapy has made me a new person. Yep, there'll be setbacks. But I can cope with that.

Life's ups aren't half as good without the downs to define them.

Dr Jelly is in the house...

My super-diagnostic powers have been proved correct.

Remember the two calls last week?
1 stroke, back home waiting for a follow up in Out Patients.
1 NSTEMI, admitted to CCU and now transferred to a regional cardiac care centre.

Shut up, anyone who says that's a barn-door diagnosis. I know it is. But it doesn't detract from my feelings of intelligence and clinical intellect. Much.

And while watching Street Doctors on telly the other day:
The patient was explaining the problem he had with his hand, and before the doctor on telly got a word in, I leaned over to my Mum and said "I bet you a cup of tea that it's Dupuytren's contracture."

One cup of tea and one smily Jelly when the doctor finally spoke. Go me!

I am a diagnostic genius :)

Let's hope it's as easy as this when I am actually a doctor.

Vegetarian, ye shall die a painful death

As told to me by a senior colleague the other day.

Ok, so she may have phrased it differently. The gist of it was that all vegetarians are anaemic and protein-deficient and don't have enough Omega-3 and something else. I think I tuned out for a bit.

I'm not the most strict vegetarian you'll ever meet (or meat, geddit? No? Oh...)

I eat my veg, but I hate most types of fruit, and if you take me to Damons, I will be ordering the BBQ ribs. The sauce is so fantastic it makes up for the rubbish meat underneath.

I don't even like the taste of meat any more. It's been five years since I was an omnivore and I don't think I'd go back. I love my Quorn, and my vegeburgers, and nut cutlets and everything.

But Ms "Ye shall burn in hell for your dis-service to the meat industry" has obviously implanted some thoughts in my head.

Meaning that breakfast now includes an Iron and Vitamin C tablet.

I'm also drinking Diet Coke plus antioxidant. Not for its super-drink powers. Just cos it was BOGOF in Tesco and I fancied trying it.

The verdict? No. Diet Coke and green tea were never meant to be in the same drink. Ever.

It does make me feel more healthy from drinking it. Not physically more healthy, obviously. But easing my conscience, like those freaks that think buying a Prius makes them eco-friendly, ignoring their three other cars with a carbon footprint the size of a Yeti. Numpties.

"Never mind the patients, this is giving me mental health issues"

^My colleague, trying to figure out if some patient really had a history of psychosis.

I spent all morning with brain-ache. I thought I'd got my head round the Mental Health stuff I'm doing at work, but it seems I haven't. Of course, I pick the week that my supervisor is on holiday to become a doofus.

It doesn't help that the full extent of my medical knowledge on this consists of personal experience and google.

But it was a great way to spend four hours today, looking like I was working really hard but actually just reading through patient's notes. I think I've perfected the art of looking busy.

So the product of four hours work? Three emails sent out, 4 pages of notes written, and one quarter-hour meeting with a colleague to try and decipher the damn thing.

Meaning the most productive thing I've done all day is watching Ashley Tisdale vidoes on YouTube.

To the pointe

Ballet starts again tonight! I am possibly the least graceful or elegant person you'll ever meet. No sense of timing, rhythm, balance.

But at every opportunity my toes are pointed. I wear thin flats at work so whenever no-one is looking, I can stand en-pointe. Badly.

The show is, like, four weeks away and I am terrified. I don't know the routine properly, and I still struggle with some of the moves. I can't do a consistent pirouette to save my life. Argh!

I'm not a natural performer. I only started ballet less than a year ago. I'm unfit. I'm the wrong shape. I'm the shy-body. But I am longing to prove myself.

To prove to myself that I can dance. To prove to myself that I am good at creative things as well as academic.

So I can continue to pretend to be a female version of Billy Elliot when I'm alone, that I'm not just kidding myself that I can dance. So when someone asks, "do you dance?" I can say "Yes. I performed in my dance school's show this year."

So if you happen to be at an amateur dance show in a few weeks time, spare a thought for that tall, awkward looking dancer. The one looking at her fellow dancers, not the audience. The one stumbling through the moves. The one half a beat behind the rest of the group.

She'll be loving every minute.

Normality (t minus 1 week)

As of next Wednesday, I am officially normal.

My CBT course will be over and I will be freed from the clutches of the Centre.

I will finally get to wave goodbye to my buddy K.

I will never again have to beg for time off work to go to appointments.

Next week, I am officially discharged from the mental health team's caseload.

I'm gonna be a sane member of the public again!

Ok, so a little exaggerated, but I am just so ecstatic to be done with it. I've been on the mental health team's books since November, but I had my first psychiatric assessment as a toddler.

In this referral, I've had:

1 assessment

8 CBT sessions

9 Dr's appointments

7 blood tests

1 ECG

11 CPN appointments

900mg fluoxetine

10,000mg propranolol

Ok, so I still have 4 months of taking fluox, but that's for maintenance rather than treatment. I am officially in recovery!

I even double-checked with a friend. Apparently, I am noticeably happier and less stressed! Woo!

According to K, I'm visibly more confident.

I feel more confident.

I feel stronger.

More able to deal with what life might throw at me.

Ready to deal with my arse of a manager. I'm a new me. I'm not gonna take that patronizing shit any more.

Get ready world. There's a new Jelly in town.

Engage brain before opening mouth

I actually spoke to Prince Harry (aka F2 Dr) today. Like, actually held a conversation without stuttering, stumbling over my words or blushing. Even I'm shocked.

We talked about nursing clinics.

At no point did we discuss movies, music, university, specialties or how he likes his coffee. You know, the important stuff. We discussed nursing clinics.

Which is why I am now working my way steadily through a dairy milk and an iced caramel macchiato. I do not care that it will make me fat. Calories will heal the pain of my stupidity.

Despite the fact that I have worked at our surgery for damn near nine months, I told him that there were no nursing clinics on that afternoon. He was a tad surprised, considering that he'd driven in specifically to observe one and that it was on his timetable.

Was there a nursing clinic that afternoon? You bet your ass there was. There were three. Three nursing clinics, that I was mysteriously oblivious to despite spending all morning staring at the appointment system.

I felt like a numpty.

Future husband, where art thou?

I've just joined the Facebook group for my uni course. It makes it feel all official and real, somehow.

The strangest part is actually having a conversation with people that I'll be spending the next five years with. My Facebook buddies are gonna be my future best friends, lifelong enemies, possible husbands, etc.

So why on Earth are none of them even remotely hot??

I'm now desperately hoping that I haven't picked the medical school with the highest proportion of girls and gay men. I will be requesting a transfer if that happens.

Loving the job, but hating it's downsides

Today I took two emergency calls, among the billions of other calls asking for routine things like appointments.

One via the bat-phone, our bright red phone that is specifically an emergency line. You answer it expecting the next thing you do to be calling an ambulance, or at the very least, the on-call GP. Most of the time, I'm sorely disappointed that it's just someone who's punched the wrong number on our switchboard.

However, today it was real. Today I took a call from the daughter of an old chap who had angina. He was, apparently, white, clammy and breathing heavily.

Normal procedure is to transfer the call through to the on-call GP, who either calls 999, goes out to see the patient, or tells them to take Gaviscon (or similar).

The line was engaged.

There's nothing in my protocol for what to do if I can't get hold of the doctor, for whatever reason. So I did what I thought; I told the daughter to put the phone down, and dial 999 now.

It's apparently fortunate I did, rather than wait for the doctor's phone line to become free to get a second opinion. He's in hospital now. That's the last I heard.

With it being a Friday, the first news I'll get will be a Notification of Death later next week, or (hopefully) a discharge letter.

I felt great for a while, because after I told the GP what had happened, she praised me on how I'd dealt with it and said I'd done the right thing. My manager echoed those same sentiments later. I would like it in writing, preferably, so I can show my other manager (the arsey one) when I have my appraisal in a month or two.

The second call didn't come via the bat-phone. I wasn't expecting it to be how it was.

At that time of day, it's all calls for blood test results, or afternoon appointments. So a little old lady telling me that her friend is very unwell indeed does not fit with what I expect.

From what she tells me, and the little I know of her friend's medical history, I think it's a stroke. A fairly major one, at that.

Once again, I attempt to transfer through to the GP. Fortunately, this time she picks up. I hand over all the info I have, and minutes later, I get a return call asking me to print off a Home Visit sheet - she's going out to see this old girl immediately.

I went home shortly after, so once again I won't know til at least Monday what happened.

The GP agreed with my diagnosis on both occasions, which put me on top of the world (briefly). Yes, I realise that those are barn-door diagnoses, but give me some credit - I'm not even a first year yet.

It just irks me that the highlight of my day is two people being seriously ill. I know that it means that they will now get the treatment they need, but I don't like the way it makes me feel - that someone needs to be ill for me to enjoy my job.

It does make me hope, however, that I will still be as enthused about working in Medicine and helping to save lives in five, ten, twenty years time as I am now.

Sweaty, smelly & dog tired... but feeling absolutely fantastic

I love my gym. Honestly, I would live there given the opportunity. I can only hope that the Uni gym is as nice.

Despite not having set foot in there for two months (ocmplete lack of energy and motivation), I managed to do an hour of cardio in the gym and then swim for half an hour. And then went all wrinkly by sitting in the hot tub for too long. But, uh, the first bit was good.

I'm not a weights girl, I like my skinny arms and wrists and I'd like to keep them that way. But give me a treadmill and my iPod and I'll be happy as Larry (whoever the hell Larry is, anyway).

It's like that scene from Scrubs where Dr Cox asks Elliot how she copes, or something, and her reply is "crank the treadmill up to x degrees and just run through the tears". My kind of girl. Defo.

The day after my marathon gym session: everything hurts. I winced at every step climbing up to the office this morning.

I gave my boss the biggest evils when he asked me to walk all the way across the building and back just to pick up his coffee. Get it yourself, lazy arse.

Give me my laptop now (not caring that it will depreciate in the five months til uni and be shit and out of date)

The Mac vs Windows argument is over. It got sidetracked slightly by geeks. I do not want Linux.

I like over-commercialised, capitalist products that have brand names that I recognise.

It's why I buy music from iTunes instead of illegal downloads. It's why I have an iPod, not a general mp3 player.

You buy a Ford car, not a generic, cheap, manufactured in somebody's spare room car with a name that has far too many x's and k's and z's. Those consonants are for long words and foreign languages.

That part of the argument was over quickly. It went something like this:



And then someone pointed out the comparable expense of a Macbook. COMPLETELY IGNORING ITS SLEEK GORGEOUS LOOKS. Ugh. Some people have weird priorities.

The A Word

Ever since my Mum told me that as a child, I was 'probably autistic', it's been going round and round in my head.

It would explain a lot. Like how I don't always understand questions unless they're phrased directly without tons of metaphors and colloquialisms. And how I am a tad OCD about having my cupboard doors and drawers completely shut. And how I don't adapt well to change. And I always feel socially inept.

I've always been very against the labelling of children. I don't see why you have to diagnose a child as dyslexic because they have trouble spelling or reading; to me, the label is simply an excuse. Just like ADHD - a perfect excuse for why little Jimmy won't behave.

But autism is something that I don't think is debatable; people have it or they don't. There would be no reasoning behind saying your kid isn't autistic if they are, because without being statemented, they can't get support at school.

But if I allow myself to carry this label of 'childhood autism', how does that affect me from now? Will I use that as an excuse every time I make a social faux-paus or don't understand what somebody's said? Am i going to be able to make new friends at uni if they're aware of this label?

I know I'm being hypothetical; there's no diagnosis, and what's the point in looking back at how I was as a small child and analysing my behaviour until we can say yes, you are autistic, or no, you're not.

If I had started secondary school with a label of autism, instead of just being 'that shy geeky girl', would I have the friends I have now? The qualifications? Would I have ended up a social outcast, like the Aspergers kid a few years above me?

I don't know what to do with this information. I'd feel stupid mentioning it to my GP, cos she's a close family friend and she's like an aunt to me. I don't want to discuss it any further with my Mum, cos she'll feel bad for mentioning it in the first place.

I can't just bottle it up and let it eat away at me, though. Therapy has taught me that much. On that note, I may discuss it with my CPN. It feels like this post is just a load of if's and but's, but it feels better to just put what I'm thinking in words.

Good/Bad

Woo! My mummy works at a charity shop occasionally and on the rare occasion that I popped in to peruse the goods, some old GP had just donated a ton of medical textbooks! So I've now trebled my book collection, and the average age is more than my own!

However, Mum thought last night was an appropriate time to suddenly tell me, without any warning, that had I been born nowadays, I would have been considered autistic. Thanks a bundle.

I'm turning into my mother

I swear, the older I get, the more like my mother I become.

Today, I went shopping with my best friend, H. We went round several shoe shops looking at gym trainers (I know, aren't we cool?) and I persuaded her to buy the cheap ones. Not because they were pretty, or a cute colour, or the most functional, but because they were the cheapest.

On the way home, I proceeded to lecture her on the importance of a university degree in getting a decent job, and how jetting off to Malaysia every few months interspersed with bar work was not a productive use of a gap year. I AM TURNING INTO A MONSTER.

I'm not joining my mates at the pub tonight because I want to curl up in front of Holby City with a nice glass of wine and retire early to bed with my new, glossy copy of Lippincott's Biochemistry. How sad. I'm only eighteen, for goodness sake! Just how dull and straight-laced am I gonna be at forty? I should be out getting smashed off my face on illegal drugs and copious amounts of alcopops, and coming home at dawn, yet my favourite social activity is lounging in a coffee shop - any coffee shop, I don't care which - with my oldest jeans and mis-matched socks on, and a fleece that my cat has moulted all over, with a giant mug of caffeine. And coming home in time for tea.

I think I need to act my age a bit more.

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Prince Harry arrived at work yesterday. Not the real one, obviously, but the new junior doctor bears more than a passing resemblance.

All of my female colleagues were admiring this new chap, until they realised that they have sons older than he is. Ha, he's all mine now, ladies. In my dreams, of course. Although at last check, I was the only young, single female in employment there.

It was just a shame that he turned up on the day that I:

a) Hadn't washed my hair
b) Had forgotten to put my contacts in
c) Had only rolled out of bed ten minutes before starting work
d) Was only staying awake through sheer willpower and a caffeine overdose

In summary, I looked like hell. Not to mention that I had a cough that could be heard all over the building, and that was producing blood as well as copious amounts of gunk. A very pleasant image indeed.

In future, I will wake up with enough time to find a clean work shirt, pop socks without ladders and cat-hair-free trousers. I will wash my hair, put my contacts in, and do my make-up. I'll even put on perfume. I'll get to work on time, and SMILE.

I think all those combined will kill my workmates with shock. The only day I ever manage to look half-decent is my day off.

Internet

I just got rickrolled by little bro. If you have no idea what I'm on about; Google is your friend. However, I love it - is it sad to admit that I like Rick Astley?

Also, totally addicted to the 'how fast can you type' thing. I'm crap at it, but it's so addictive.

And this cartoon from xkcd.com sums me up perfectly:

Update

Reunion was fun, in the end. Going into work for an 8.30am start after only 4 hours sleep was less fun, but except for a very hoarse voice, which I put down to coughing up colourful gunk for days, I think I got away with it.

Although a few people I would have liked to have seen were off gallivanting around Asia or Australia or already back at uni, it was great to get the whole year group back together and catch up.

The after-party was pretty good, trailing round three or four bars and ending up in a new club in town with a flashing dance floor - so retro.

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Maude (my car - don't mock me for naming it) has got another step closer to the scrap yard. On picking up a friend to drive to school for reunion, I discovered that the drivers-side door was well and truly jammed.

I lost all dignity trying to clamber over the gearstick in a mini-skirt and heels from the passenger side to get to my seat.

It's not booked in at the garage yet, cos I can't manage it til payday, but the good news is that the lock now has around a 40% success rate - slightly embarrassing if it chooses to jam as I'm trying to nonchalantly get into my car while talking to a (extremely gorgeous and lovely) male colleague.

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In other news, I tidied my bedroom for the first time in months, and have thrown out so much stuff I've rediscovered the colour of my carpet. I even hoovered.

Patients from hell

Sometimes I really want to throw things at our patients. It is not an emergency just because you're going on holiday tomorrow. Threatening me with "I'll go to OutOfHours" doesn't bother me - in fact, I'd love it if you did, cos you'll wait twice as long AND it leaves me with one more appointment to give to somebody who's really ill.

I hate that sweet little old ladies will wait a week for an appointment with cardiac chest pain because they don't want to make a fuss, but a person who works 9-5 will insist on an emergency appointment for their ear infection.

Driving like a funky thing

Is it sad that just because British Summer Time has officially started, I have the sunroof on my car open all the time, even though it's actually blowing a Force 9 gale outside? But its sunny, meaning roof stays open.

There may be a small part of my mind that thinks it looks kinda funky to be driving around with the roof open and the radio on. It'd make an even cooler image if my car wasn't rusty, missing two hubcabs, with a smashed headlight, plenty of bird poop and dust, and a massive dent in the boot. Out of those five, only one is my fault - if I put it in the garage, it would have less bird poop.

As for its other faults - meh, it still drives.

Reunion

It's the school reunion tomorrow night, and I'm not overly convinced that I want to go. Out of the 150 people I went to sixth form with, I think there's only twenty or so that I'd actually like to see again, and out of that twenty, I've seen nineteen of them in the past two weeks.

I have absolutely no desire to stand around making idle chit-chat with people I was never friends with about how hammered they got at the union last week and how little work they've done; nor am I that keen to see any of my old teachers. I'd like to walk in, collect my certificates, and walk out again. But social etiquette will probably prevail, and tomorrow night you'll find me making idle polite small talk with people I have so little feeling towards, I don't even dislike them anymore.

Vanity (or my seemed lack thereof)

I got contacts last week. It's been a dream come true to be able to wear sunglasses. I haven't worn sunglasses since I was five (I'm now eighteen), but I seriously doubt that Minnie Mouse frames are in vogue anymore, so I think shopping is due.

Although the novelty of being spectacle-free is wearing off sharpish. It's got something to do with the time it takes to go through the whole routine: wash hands, rinse lenses, rinse case, pull eyelid up, pull other eyelid down, place lens on eye, blink rapidly at dust in eye, retrieve lens from cheek/sink/floor, rinse lens, try again. Then repeat on the other side until eyesight becomes equal.

It doesn't help that I collected a new lens on Saturday, with a different prescription to compensate for my eyes being a weird shape (my optician's words, not mine) and I think I may have forgotten to wash the solution off properly. Suffice to say I was curled up on the bathroom floor wimpering like a girl, while trying to claw the lens back out of my now extremely red and slightly puffy eye.

Maybe my glasses weren't so bad, after all.