A new identity

A few weeks ago I was offered my first nursing job - and last week, after much dithering, I accepted it.  At the end of this year I will become a registered nurse, and then I will be working on the ITU at my local hospital.  ITU stands for Intensive Therapy Unit and is what used to be known as Intensive Care - it is where the very sickest patients are cared for, and each patient gets one-to-one nursing care, 24 hours a day.  I have so many emotions whirling around my head about this new job:

• pride - I've got a great job, in a specialism I desperately wanted to work in
• fear - I'm going to be a qualified nurse, responsible for the care of very poorly patients
• excitement - I'm going to be a qualified nurse, responsible for the care of very poorly patients
• motivation - I need to revise all my knowledge of acute nursing care, and learn so much more
• eagerness - I want to start now
• sartorial disappointment - I will be wearing scrubs rather than a traditional nursing uniform
• nervousness - can we put the brakes on, please? I've loved being back at University.

But mainly, with the knowledge that I have a good job waiting for me at the end of the year, I have relaxed and started to enjoy myself more.  I have always enjoyed nursing and been certain that this was what I wanted to do, but there has also been an underlying tension - could I really do this?  could I be good at this?  what effect was my change in career having on the family?  I was surprised to find that this tension disappeared when I finally sent the email to accept the job.

"Yes, I have a job in ITU," I tell people.  I'm getting used to saying it.  I have a new identity.  In my head I say to myself "I am an ITU nurse" - trying it out for size - and it feels right.

 

Commuting

I have the nicest commute at the moment.  I work strange hours so I'm never travelling at peak times, which means the tubes are not too rammed; most of the time I can get a seat.  I just have to travel six stops, and I can get from home to work in about half an hour.  

The hospital is in the City - an area of London that I know very well because I worked there when I was an accountant for many years.  I find myself taking out my phone and snapping pictures every day, because this part of London is just so photogenic.

A top in blue voile

As well as the children's exams, I am also starting a new placement and embarking on the nerve wracking process of job hunting at the moment.  

On a day off on Monday I decided the best thing I could do to create some calm and light relief in my week was to embark on some sewing.  Inspired by all the beautiful clothes appearing in my Instagram feed for Me Made May (and especially those put up by Liesl and Suse), I cut into my precious piece of Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks voile and made myself another Lisette market dress tunic.  I wear both the ones I made earlier in the year constantly; they look so good with trousers and a cardi or a scarf.

The voile is sumptuous - soft, drapey, feminine and luxurious.  It is also surprisingly non-sweary to sew with.  It feels as though it should slither all over my table, but it doesn't.  Pleasingly I also found a length of narrow velvet ribbon which my grandmother had given me, in exactly the right shade of yellow to match the centre of the flowers on the fabric, so I hemmed the top with that.

A happy few hours sewing, and a luxurious-feeling new blue top.  I just wish it was easier to find a place in my house to take full length photos of myself (and a clean mirror!).

Exam food

The children both have exams this week.  Olivia has her Year 6 SATs - four consecutive mornings of maths and English exams - and Cam has his first two biology GCSE exams; his third exam is in a few weeks' time.  They're taking it all in their stride, but I know that they're tired and tense too.  This feels like the start of many, many years of exams-in-May as they each work their way through GCSEs, AS levels and A levels (and beyond).

Cam, flopped on the sofa after a day at school and two hours of revision

I expanded the family rule of "When someone has a birthday, they choose what the family has for supper", to "When someone has a birthday or does an exam, they choose what the family has for supper".  Tonight we had Olivia's choice of beefburgers (nice, juicy quarterpounder steak burgers from Waitrose), oven chips, and rather specifically "carrots cut like coins, not sticks".  Very nice.  I don't often cook burgers so this felt like the treat it was meant to be.  Much ketchup was applied.

Cam's choice, which we are having on Friday, is lasagna, garlic bread and sweetcorn.  I don't often make a lasagna as it feels like too much faff at the end of a long day, so again this will be a special treat.  I love how both their choices are simple, slightly retro and not at all the sort of thing I normally cook.

My contribution has been to make them orange-scented buns for after school - I think they definitely deserve a sweet treat this week. 

Do you have any exam rituals in your house?  Any pre- or post-exam food favourites? Personally I don't really care what I eat after an exam as long as I have a big breakfast involving oats and bananas for breakfast beforehand.

Cycling in the Olympic Park

It's the time of year where I think about pulling my bike out from under its covers and using it again.  I am strictly a fair weather cyclist, and I would never dream of combining lycra with a bike.  I know - with some sort of spooky sixth sense - that it would not be a good look for me.

Graham and I went for a gentle, pottering sort of ride around the Olympic Park last weekend; now formally known as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and fully open to the public once again.  It's a very big place, and we wanted to have a good explore and get to know our way around this new part of our local neighbourhood.  The aquatics centre opened a couple of months ago, and now hundreds of acres of parkland and the velopark are open too.  There are only a few more bits still to open (the Hockey and Tennis Centre next month, the Canal Park towards the end of this year and finally the stadium in 2016).

The velopark is the section closest to our house; it takes me just four and a half minutes to cycle there.  The indoor race track, the outdoor 'road' track and the BMX trails are all open at the velopark, and anybody can book a session and ride.  You can even hire a bike and take lessons if you want to.  There will be a massive network of mountain biking trails opening too later this year.  For now, I just wanted to stop off (there are plenty of bike racks outside, of course!) and have a look round.  We wandered into the velodrome and sat down for ten minutes to watch a local cycling club do some time trials.  I really want to have a go at track cycling, and I am totally going to book one of their taster sessions once I have settled into my new placement.

 

There is a very friendly branch of Cycle Surgery in the ground floor of the velodrome, and they didn't look even slightly fazed when I wheeled in my enormous sit-up-and-beg bike (with basket, obviously) to get a new tyre put on.  Admittedly my bike did look a little ordinary next to the shiny, sleek racers they had on display.

There's a cafe upstairs, where you can drink coffee and watch what's going on on the track below while the mechanics fit your new tyre.  Or you could walk round the corner to the Unity Kitchen Cafe and then sit outside under a tree for twenty minutes with a cup of coffee and a croissant, listening to the sound of birds in the trees and children enjoying one of the enormous new playgrounds, and just try and remember the polluted, industrial wasteland that was in the same place just ten years ago.  It's getting increasingly difficult to do.  Our part of East London was utterly transformed by the 2012 Olympics, and have to pinch myself sometimes when I think that all this splendour is now just four minutes away by bike.

 

Road trip

We drove back home from Mum and Dad's on Sunday.  They live in South-West France, so it's one heck of a drive.  The part through France takes eleven hours, and when the ferry and the drive up through Kent and into East London are included, the whole journey takes around sixteen hours.  

I've always rather enjoyed long road-trips.  I did a few when I was at University and studying in America for a year, although I still have the classics on my to-do list: Route 66 from Chicago to LA, and the full East to West Coast trip, New York City to San Francisco.  When I was living in Australia, in my early 20s, I drove from Brisbane up to Cairns which is still my longest road trip (nearly 24 hours in driving time, although we spread it over three days).  In 2010 the children and I took a road trip from France to Switzerland, and then back along the German border to northern France and home.  That remains the longest trip I have done without someone else to share the driving.

We're used to the long drive down the length of France.  It starts with rolling off the ferry very early in the morning, and then we drive down the Calais peninsula, admiring all the wind turbines along what the French call the 'Autoroute des Anglais', because every other car (at least) is English.

 

All along our journey, the main role of whoever is navigating is to avoid Paris AT ALL COSTS.  I am well used to the mad, fast, often intolerant driving that goes on in a capital city, and I actually used to drive around Paris a fair bit when I was younger and working there, but I wouldn't want to do it now.  Paris traffic is either at a complete standstill, or moving eye-wateringly fast, and you need to be unhesitating and precise in your navigational skills at all times.

Much of our drive through France is on the autoroutes.  French autoroutes are owned by private companies, and most charge tolls to drivers.  However, the tolls are pretty modest - our eleven hour drive costs around £30.  I'm more than happy to pay because the autoroutes are such a pleasure to drive on - quiet, incredibly smooth and well-maintained, and well supplied with 'aires' (service stations).  Some of the aires sell petrol, food, magazines and are parked up with hundreds of trucks and cars, but others are just a selection of picnic tables and parking spots in a little forested glade, set back from the motorway.  On our way down we found a particularly nice one somwehere south of Orleans, where Olivia did some sunbathing and Graham did some yoga stretches (our journey down was the day after his marathon, so sitting in the car for 16 hours was tougher than it would otherwise have been for him).

We have flasks of coffee and bottles of water for drinking on the go, and a plentiful supply of chewing gum (neither Graham or I like long drives without chewing gum - is this strange compulsion just us?).  The children are plugged into their iPods, and spend the whole time reading.  Whoever is driving gets to choose the music for the front, and the passenger is not allowed to argue with the driver's choice.  Graham and I take it in turns to drive/choose music for about two hours each. 

The temperatures rise steadily as we get further south, and finally we turn off the autoroute and drive down small, rural roads for the final forty minutes or so to Mum and Dad's house.  We all know these roads so well, and Graham and the children and I all look out for the landmarks that tell us we are so very nearly there.  Coming back home, there is always a strange moment of disconnect when you get off the ferry at Dover, and England now feels like a strange and foreign land - so used are we to French voices, driving on the right and the sight and smells of the French landscape.

And then it's done.  The car engine is turned off, we all get out, have a stretch and start unloading bags.  If we are arriving at Mum and Dad's there are excited hugs, delicious wine and a hot meal before bed.  If we are arriving back in London there is the excitement of seeing the hens again, the comforting familiarity of being back home, and a mental calculation of how many more months it will be before we can get back in the car and do it all over again.

    

Sunday morning running

As I write this, Graham is over half way round the 2014 Brighton Marathon.  I am obsessively checking his progress via the wonderful, free app the race organisers have provided, which gives me his split times every 5k and a little map with a moving dot which is my husband.  I am sad I can't be there to cheer him on in person, but this app means that I can at least feel some of the excitement of the occasion at home.  I love this sort of technology; it makes the whole experience so much better for everyone.  

My own running is still going pretty well.  As he was resting before his race, Graham yesterday ran parkrun alongside me, at my considerably slower pace.  Because of our wildly different running abilities, it is very rare that we run together - I think the last time was probably on holiday in France last summer.  It felt strange to run together - I missed the music that I usually listen to!  But I loved the companionship, and it made me want to speed up so that we can run together more often.

A month ago I got a new PB by running under 28 minutes for the first time ever.  The sense of achievement when something like this happens is enormous.  I really love the 5k distance - I've got no desire to join Graham in running marathons, but I am determined to knock another couple of minutes off my time over the next year or two, and inch towards the 25 minute mark.

I've done very little running during my A&E placement.  My feelings about this alternate between thinking 'fair enough - you're on your feet for twelve and a half hours at a time', and knowing that really, deep down in my heart, walking around A&E, no matter how fast I walk and how busy I am, is no substitute for proper exercise.  Most of the nurses I was working with were runners, or cyclists and managed to fit exercise into their days off.  A&E was also an emotionally draining place to work, so some running on a day off would be very good for my wellbeing.  After the Easter holidays I start a new placement on an oncology ward, and along with all the nursing skills I want to master while I am there, I also want to get the hang of fitting exercise around my work.

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Well, would you look at that - while I have been writing this blog, Graham has finished his marathon.  In a very good time of 3 hours, 29 minutes and 4 seconds.  I am beaming with pride!

Mothering Sunday

Early morning in the Olympic Park

In the morning we all went for a swim in the London Aquatics Centre in the Olympic Park, which opened to the public earlier this month.  It is one of my favourite buildings from the Olympics, and looks much better now than it did then, because the wings of extra seating have been removed.  It is beautiful inside and out, and I filled my camera with photos.  Cam shrieked when I asked him to take some photos of Graham and me, and we had a little smooch for the camera.

The children bought me presents (Cam this book, and Olivia a scarf with flamingos on it, inspired by my abiding love of all things flamingo) and made me cards, and Graham bought me daffodils and croissants.  I didn't have to lift a finger all day

In the evening Graham and I popped down to the local pub to listen to some live music and enjoy a pint of beer.

What more could anyone need? Perfect.  

10 things

• I baked some strawberry buns with lemon buttercream icing - just because I'd spotted the Cadbury's mini eggs in the supermarket and thought some little buns with mini eggs on top were just what I needed to bake to celebrate the arrival of spring.

• As well as mini eggs we have many large hen's eggs at the minute.  Bertha, Adelaide and Ethel are all laying an egg a day, and 8 year old Queenie is thinking about laying again (8 years old is an epic age for a hen).

• Cam sits his first two GCSE papers on the same day in May as Olivia's Year 6 SATS test; and later that same evening, Olivia is playing in a music festival.  I have written it all in the calendar and am trying not to think too much about the collective stress levels that day.
• Cam then has a three and a half week gap before he sits his final paper.  GCSE timetables are insane.
• My geraniums loved the mild, wet winter and are all blooming again.
• Working in A&E has been by far the best part of my course.  I have loved every, single minute of it and am so sad it comes to an end next week.  I have arranged to go back for another 5 week placement this autumn.
• When I work a long day shift, Olivia stays up so that she can ask me, as soon as I walk through the door, "What were your most exciting patients today? Did the helicopter bring in anything dramatic?" - she's all about the blood and guts, this one. 

• I have re-arranged the bookshelves downstairs, and am slightly startled to note that I have five whole shelves of cookery books.  I always considered myself to be very picky about which cookbooks I own; only the really good ones, which I use regularly, are bought.  Turns out there are more great cookbooks out there than I realised.

• I am knitting myself a pinky-orangey-red beanie hat.  I anticipate this being worn very often.
• I am no longer the tallest in the family.  Cam has overtaken me.

Confidence regained

Fresh, white uniform drying on the line

My nursing course has reached a new stage.  The teaching at University has now finished, and from now until I qualify at the end of December, I am out on placement (with a couple of holiday breaks in there too).  I have three stripes on my epaulettes, and the nurses I am working with expect much more from me now that I am in the final part of the course.

I didn't feel remotely ready to finish the teaching element of this course.  In the last week at University I became less and less convinced that I could ever work as a nurse.  The sheer enormity of what the job entails seemed overwhelming, and as we crammed in the last few bits of theory I felt derailed and uncertain that I could do this.  But after just one week back on placement, this time working in the frenetic and dramatic environment of one of the UK's biggest and busiest emergency departments, I have regained my confidence.  

Nursing is such a practical, hands-on job and when we are out on placement we are constantly doing - washing, giving medication, carrying out procedures and observations, documenting, assessing, making comfortable, feeding, communicating, soothing and investigating.  Since I started back in September 2012, I have learnt how to do all these practical skills, and become gradually more competent in them without even realising.

The theory is crucial too - medicine always needs to be based on the best available evidence, and without the theory to underpin the practice we are in danger of carrying out tasks ritualistically and unthinkingly.  We need the teaching and critical thinking skills that the University element of our course has given us, but on their own they're not much use.  I love placement for bringing the theory and the practice together, and I think that is ultimately what I love most about nursing - I get to use the academic side of my brain, whilst also doing something that is completely hands-on and practical.

Working in A&E is fascinating.  You see every possible type of person and condition you could ever imagine, along with things you never even thought possible or wanted to see.  I have never known a 12 and a half hour shift pass so quickly, and even three weekend nightshifts in a row didn't wipe me out as much as I thought they might.  At 4:30am, on the third night I cleaned and dressed a massive cavity wound in the foot of an elderly homeless patient who amazingly slept through the whole procedure and then woke up at the end to inspect the quality of my bandaging, say thank you and give me one of the broadest grins I have ever seen.  We had a laugh and a quick chat, which left me on a high for the rest of the shift, and I thought to myself, I can totally do this job.

Arriving at work for the start of Saturday's nightshift

Leaving work on Sunday morning, and heading home to bed