Well, my first attempt at quitting smoking failed miserably. I lasted a grand total of 12 hours (16 if you include sleeping time) before I started again, then I had an epiphany… I don’t actually like the smell of smoke on my clothes, I’m saving up to buy a house and the money would be handy and my pulse and blood pressure weren’t great for someone my age. So a new plan was formulated, quietly I headed to my local superstore and discovered that they had a special offer on nicotine replacement patches – £10 for a week’s supply – bargain, while I was there I stocked up on sugar free sweets and fruit and salad stuff – I have no intention of gaining weight. As I write this I’m about to go into day 5 without cigarettes.
I was hoping that it would start getting easier by now but it’s actually getting worse. But the patches and my sudden interest in healthy living (I haven’t had any chips or chocolate in those 5 days either – I just prefer salad at the moment) are making it easier. And even though it’s only been 5 days the positive effects are already kicking in, my pulse rate has now gone back within expected limits, it’s 68 at the moment and my blood pressure has started to shift back to the low side of good. I also ran up 3 flights of stairs with all our kit today, just to see if I could, and although I was slightly out of breath I could still talk and recovered in super quick time. Who knows – I may even buy some new trainers and start running again!
Now I’m off to bed so I’m ready for my treat tomorrow – with the money I would have spent on cigarettes I’m having a manicure!
So, 2008… I wonder how long it will take for me to stop writing 2007 on my paperwork… I don’t know about you guys but I have issues with new years resolutions – if you want to stop something / do something why wait until January? This year however I have made a resolution. As you know when I split with my ex I was smoking vast quantities of cigarettes again within minutes, then I slowed down and up until yesterday was back on about 20 a day. However, today I had 2. And this is cold turkey, I have no patches, fake cigarettes, tablets, injections, lozenges etc… just me, my will power and some cherry tomatoes. Hopefully by this time tomorrow I will have smoked the grand total of 0 cigarettes. Have pity on my crewmate because I’m back at work tomorrow too and he sees me more than anyone else and so I will be putting his good nature to the test. Fortunately he doesn’t smoke so that should make it easier for me and if the snow we’ve been promised arrives I’m going to be even less likely to want to turn out in the cold to smoke.
I met an 88 year old lady the other day who had smoked since she was 14… she stopped 4 years ago… now there’s some motivation for me! Plus the money I’ll be saving (over £2000 a year) will come in handy, I’m due to have my first holiday in six years this year, I think I’m going to Turkey with my Aunty Brenda and her children but she’s organising everything – I just have to get a passport!
So wish me luck, this could be an interesting couple of weeks!
The following message has been pre-written. By the time this posts (if everything goes as planned) I should be safely under the influence of vast quantities of alcohol! Just wanted to take the oppertunity to thank you for your continued attention and support and wish you all a happy and healthy new year.
Well, there we have it. Christmas over and done with for another 12 months. I must have been good this year because Santa got me nice stuff, my crewmate will be pleased that included in my gifts was a large quantity of stuff to make me smell lovely! I am pleased that my Mum (as well as getting me nice prezzies including the new Harry Potter film) gave me money, when I told her how it would be spent she was unsurprised because she had looked at getting it for me anyway. She received an excited phone call tonight to let her know that in my sweaty palms I had my own personal Series 3 box set of Doctor Who… she was not as excited as I was… infact I could visualise her rolling her eyes down the phone at me.
A happy discovery in the Doctor Who department was a rumour that Rose will be back for a bit in series 4, this makes me incredibly happy, I’d like to see him reunited with her, I don’t like it when he’s a sad Doctor….
And now I, like Rose, await the coming of the man who will sweep us off our feet… And so I leave you with a question -where have all the good men gone? (and a lovely video)
Ahhh, this blog has reached the grand old age of 1! The year, as you know, has not worked out as planned - however I am filled with confidence that 2008 will be the year when it all goes right. This time next year I am hoping to be a millionaire, have a nice new boyfriend (or 2), apply for (or already have done) a paramedic course, apply for the x-factor, start a new band as an outlet for my talents and get a haircut! Ambitious plans and it will be interesting to see how many I actually manage to do…
Well, it’s been over a month since I wrote and the seasonal festivities are just around the corner. I’d love to tell you I’ve been busy saving the world but alas no, I have just been having a nasty bout of writers block. More than once I’ve sat at my laptop and written stuff only to delete it later. I’m just coming to the end of a couple of weeks leave from work, I thought it would be nice to use some of the holiday time I’m entitled to, my body however has decided that it would be nice to use the time to get ill. In the week before I took my leave most of the people I went out to had called an ambulance because of a nasty strain of ‘flu that is doing the rounds, I thought it was lucky at the time that I had managed to escape without catching it off of one of them… then 2 days into my time off I got a raging sore throat… then my glands began to swell, then came the high temperature, the cough and associated tight chest, the general lethargy and muscular aches and pains, and the headache … splendid! So I went to my helpful local pharmacy and stocked up on as much home medication as possible and hid under my duvet with the supplies. I’m feeling much better now – just in time to go back to work at the weekend!
Despite not feeling my full shiny self I have had the pleasure of having Merys to keep me company for the last couple of days. Despite warning her that she may spend her days nursing me she still chose to visit (she didn’t tell me that she too had a cough to match mine!) and we had a couple of interesting days. The first was spent with me doing my guided tour of London landmarks, with a tiny amount of “celebrity” stalking (we spotted Lee Mead in Covent Garden) but we called it a day early and only got as far as Leicester Square before retreating back to mine for takeaway and central heating. And today we visited the London Dungeon.
Merys warned me before we set out that she’s a big furry chicken (her Mum actually laughed when she was told of our plans) and she wasn’t wrong. The dungeon is a dark and spooky place and I found myself on more than one occasion having to prize her off of me… there were children there who were less scared! I fell in love with the Christmas-song singing devil there, it was worth going just to see him in my opinion! It has been a great couple of days though and has me feeling much better (although still no festive spirit as such)
I think my festive spirits may appear some point late an Christmas eve, I can’t do any present shopping until I get paid on Christmas eve and it’s not going to be a task I look forward to… although I’m currently viewing it as a challenge so it might be fun in the end… I foresee lots of random and unexpected gifts for my family!!!
We live in a democratic society; if we dislike our government we can put banners outside our houses stating that fact, we can practice any religion we choose and we can voice our own opinion, whatever that may be. Britain was once a real island, a tiny speck of land on the global map, barely worth noticing and yet… the people of this country have, on more than one occasion, defended it’s borders against would be invaders and conqueror’s, fought to keep the freedom and way of life which we take for granted. It’s easy to forget the sacrifices that have been made, the young men and women who paid for our independence with their lives.
Whatever your feelings on the current conflicts there are still men and women putting their lives on the line to do what our democratically elected government believes is right for this country. It’s November 11th, a time to pay silent tribute to those who have, and continue, to defend our little island, her people and her allies. And I thank them all…
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
It’s undoubtedly Autumn now. The days are short and my heating’s on, but I like it. Of all the seasons this one is my favourite, it always has been. Autumn is simple and elegant, the colours can be vibrant and the wind gives everyone a healthy glow. I like my fluffy jumpers/pyjamas/socks and they all come out at this time of year. I’m not writing much today, instead I intend to share a much loved poem of mine -
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
There are certain jobs that I enjoy, they are pretty much all jobs where someone is really ill and somewhere in one of my bags I have something which will make them better. Just recently I have had a nice little run of jobs like this.
The first one I’m going to tell you about is my diabetic emergency, well not mine but…. ahh, you know what I mean. Back in training school we were taught how to give an injection into someones muscle for various medical reasons (one of which is a hypoglycaemic emergency)- I have so far only ever given 1 injection and that was about 17 months ago…
The thing with most diabetics I go to who are having a hypo (shortened version of hypoglycaemia) is that they are either awake enough to eat/drink something to raise their sugar levels or because I now work with a paramedic he can give glucose directly into their blood stream. My patient did not fall into either category
He was an older gentleman who had had diabetes for a long time, he controlled it with insulin and had never had any problems before. On this particular day his family had called because he was “acting strangely”. When we arrived he was awake and talking but not really lucid, he was moving around a lot in bed and the only way I could describe what I saw when writing my paperwork was “patient behaving strangely”. As he was diabetic we checked his sugar level first, although it wasn’t a typical presentation of a hypoglycaemic emergency, the result showed his sugar level was very low. Because he was awake we tried to encourage him to drink a sugary drink, but either he wasn’t able to understand or he just wasn’t thirsty. As he was moving so much my crewmate couldn’t get a needle in his arm (and my crewmate’s very good at it) which left us with 1 more option.
In our bag of goodies we have a drug called glucagon, without going into too much technical detail it releases sugar stores that are lurking in the liver. I’ve only ever seen it used once and then it didn’t work as the patient in question had no sugar stores because they hadn’t eaten for the best part of a week. On this day though the family told us that the gentleman had been eating and drinking normally. So while my crewmate held his arm still I gave the injection, and was amazed at the speed of the result! Within a couple of minutes he was worried that he had guests but didn’t have his teeth in! We found his teeth and gave him some jam sandwiches and a fizzy drink. As this had never happened to him before we popped him to hospital to make sure there wasn’t a serious reason why his sugar level had gone so low and by the time we arrived there he was back to normal!
This makes me happy because it’s something I’d never seen work before, he went from not well to normal in about 15 minutes, and all because of my magic bag. Plus he said he didn’t remember me giving the injection so I must have done it gently! It makes me all fuzzy inside when I actually do something and can see the result!
On another note, I haven’t had a video on here for a while so I will leave you with the Monty Python boys and their ideas on how to cut hospital waiting times – hope it brightens up your Monday morning!
This is a photo of my Dad, me and my Mum at my 21st birthday, it’s a bit faded because it’s a much loved photo. It’s also the last one of all of us together, we also have a nice one with my brother in it taken on the same night – my Mum has that one. It’s six years today since my Dad died, anyone who has lost a much loved parent will tell you that although you get used to it you never get over it. I especially miss him at big events, both good and bad. There are times just recently I could have really done with having him around. He may have been gone for a while now but he’s still my hero.
(Normal posting will be resumed shortly, I have a couple of stories I’m working on at the moment but I couldn’t let today pass without acknowledging it)
Hello and welcome to my page. I'm Laura and it is my world that you are about to enter - don't forget your wellies! And just in case you don't know - the thoughts and ideas on here are mine and may not reflect the views and opinions of my employers, colleagues, family, friends or anyone else in the world.
If I do write about patients then dates, times and identifiable details will have been changed to respect the patients right to confidentiallity, so even if you think you recognise things - you probably don't.
