Courage

Now I can't say too much about individual patients of mine for confidentiality reasons but sometimes you can't help but have your heart broken. Occasionally you will look after a patient that you somehow will immediately hold in higher regard than the others. You're not meant to have favourites but I'm only human after all.

I remember the first one I fell in love with. It was before I became a nurse. I was still at school and working as a teagirl in our local hospice with Nicola. His name was Tom and Nic and I would mitch off school (sorry mum!!) and catch a bus to visit him at St Lukes. We would sit there all afternoon and listen to him telling us stories about his cats (hey anything to avoid Sociology with the pervemeister Jukes. Nic do you remember him trying to thrust his crotch at the class? Classy fella.). He was a beautiful man and we were devastated when he passed away.

I'm not sure what it is that draws me to some people. Sometimes all it will take is a look in someones eyes for you to develop a soft spot for them. With this particular man it was a throw away comment made by another nurse.

'I don't like 'X'. He's so rude so I told him that he can't speak to me like that' She said in a true 'Kath and Kim' style voice that would have been funny if she wasn't referring to a real person.

My heart instantly went out to this patient who after just being diagnosed with terminal cancer was not allowed to be a little grumpy. I was looking after him that afternoon so I went and introduced myself to him properly and asked how he was doing. He was obviously very withdrawn but had good reason to be. He had a wife and family that were his main priority until that point. Now someone had told him that even though he felt reasonably well, he was riddled and there was not much they could do other than pump him full of cyto-toxic drugs to prolong his life by a couple of months.

So I allowed him time to process his fate and I didn't force him if he didn't want to do anything that had to be done just because it was on 'my schedule'. I'm a terrible believer in hospitals being about the patients rather than the nurse. This is probably the reason for my terrible time management skills! Anyway he complied more with me than anyone else and after a few days, guess what? He wasn't a rude and unpleasant man as this other nurse had labelled him. He was intelligent and kind. (I love being right!)

When it came to the end his family camped out in his room and supported him and cared for him through the day and night. Their strength was amazing, but I suppose a natural thing to do when the husband was him. He passed away this week and hearing the news still felt like a kick in the gut.

I am so lucky to be doing this job (someone remind me of this when I'm complaining of stinky, pee-sodden confused old buggers next week) as the people I meet enrich my life so much. The bravery and 'you'll have to catch me first' attitude of these people astound me every time. I'm not sure that I could ever be that dignified and courageous if faced with the same. As someone once said to me I feel priviledged that patients and their families allow me to go through this journey with them.

Two of my friends are also going through a similiarly but separate shitty times. One as a relative and the other as a patient. I have so much admiration and respect for these two young women that I couldn't possibly put put it into words. All I can say is that I'm thinking of you both constantly even if I'm crap and never call!

K-I know you're still hurting. She'll always be with you. It just means you can never do anything naughty ever again. Say goodbye to the dreams of champagne and coke parties. She'd never allow it!

H2- Never accept a booking for the 'Hotel D'Anchor' again and for heavens sake, eat some licorice allsorts!

Brainiac

We here in Australia have just had the first seasons of MythBusters and Brainiac...

....Jon Tickle, how I have missed you!!!!

Celebrity Dinner Party

Six guests, dead or alive, and someone to serve the wine!

1. Polly Jean Harvey- although am perhaps a little too superficial to be able to converse fluently with this obviously deep thinking rockstar. Afterwards she could strum a couple of her biggest hits and we could all screech along to the chorus!
2. Indiana Jones- Only if he came along sporting his ripped shirt and rippling muscles...swoon. He'd dazzle us with tales of pretty girls and the jungle.
3. Alan Rickman- That chocolate voice, that obvious intelligence. I could could listen to him all night. And afterwards he could tango me around the living room.
4. Belinda Jones- Author of fluffy chick-lit. Some of her stories feel so familiar that I often wonder if she is in fact my long lost sister!
5. Frankie Poullain- The best looking 'tache in the business. How dare Justin and the boys kick him out of the band?
6. Ruth Edmondson- Pauls sister. Will forever be a celebrity in my mind and she is far more fabulous in real life than in fiction

And serving the wine: Matthew McConaughey- Just because he's so pretty!!

(list subject to change along with the seasons!)

Massage Update

(Kirsty and me)

Well at least she didn't hand me the paper pants!

Am coming to realise that massage is all about trust. It was lovely but I feel more sore now than I did before. It obviously didn't help that every time she touched the left side of my back, I twinged and a spasm ran though my spine. Ticklish, moi?

She must have thought I was a freak!

I think it takes an incredibly confident person to allow someone to wobble their thighs intentionally and not worry about the obvious 'fat slapping' sound coming from the room (with no ceilings...why would you not have ceilings in there? Everyone could hear!) when the therapist is doing that 'cuppy slappy' thing.

All I could think about when she was massaging my legs and feet was 'oh my god, where did I put that pumice stone? My tootsies are like old womens. Did she see the saddle sacks? Of course she did. She must be glad she doesn't have my hips. Did I wear the right pants? Maybe diamante palm trees on knickers are so last season. I sooo should have worn the lacy brown and turqouise pair, but I can't find the matching bra and everyone knows that "unmatching underwear means an unmatched life"!'

It's no wonder I didn't relax that much.

I promise you Kirsty, when I'm rich and famous I will ship you, Jim and whoever else (the whole scooby gang?) out here, put you on the payroll but only make you massage me twice a year. The rest of the time we can spend on the beach-side glass painting and trying desperately to sell our wares!

Massage Therapy?

(Outside the offending salon!!)

Have booked myself in for a massage tomorrow. There are thousands of places to choose from over here leading to the inevitable feeling that massage is as common as!

I have not entered a 'Beauty and Health Salon' in over two years. There is good reason for this. The first time I came to Australia with Dave, we stopped at Kuala Lumpur for a few days to stay with a couple of friends of his. The wife of Dave's school buddy suggested we treat ourselves to a couple of hours of indulgent massage, saunas and facials. I readily agreed. I am not one of those masochistic self deprivation type birds after all.

I, however, changed my mind when on entering the establishment I was handed a pair of scrunchy see through paper knickers to wear and told to strip off and adorn the forementioned garment! Being naturally prudish and self concious (hey I have spent years learning how to conceal my cellulite and wobbly bits to not let some jumped up gorgeous malay woman with noo cellulite try and scrub mine away!!) I was a little perturbed. I did strip off, and I did put on the offending underpants (after first checking they were in fact one use only and completely throw-away-able!) and attempted to sit on the massage table in a manner which would conceal my modesty. Very difficult without mermaid long tresses (reason for my sudden liking in long hair? Discuss!).

I breathed a sigh of relief when someone walked through the door who was not a; a bloke, b; not a gorgeous malay woman but a chunky canadian, and c; obviously not put off by the sight of an english bird cowering in the corner wearing nothing but paper pants! She also had an irritating laugh which I found comforting at first but wore very thin when after twenty minutes of pummelling she still wouldn't let me relax and listen to the tropical birds twitterings or dolphin noises on the 'relaxation' tape playing on the cheap CD player in the corner!

Anyway the Canadian ground some sea salt grainy scrub stuff into my legs and body (thankfully avoiding the whole boob area. Would have grabbed my tshirt and ran if she did) and rubbed it so hard into my skin I felt like I was some surfer dude washed up on a very forbidding coast line. Did anyone tell me that beauty would hurt? No! So with my body smarting from the salt she told me to 'geddinta the sahna, but, hehehe'! There I languished for a few minutes trying to gulp down mouthfuls of hot euculypt air. I was still wearing the paper knickers when I see Dave's friends wife clamouring to join me! I grabbed a towel and sat petrified in the corner until we had to get out!!

Afterwards came the facial and gentle body massage where I swear the Candian tried to tickle my feet to the point of nausea, pummel the knots from my spine until each vertabrae cricked and gave me a facial which would have been relaxing if I hadn't been subjected to the whole story of how she married a malaysian man and had bucket loads of kids only to leave him and had to work sixty hours a week to put all the children through school whilst living in a two bedroom flat!

I swore never again but here I am contemplating putting myself through the same thing again. Am thinking I was spoiled when I volunteered to be Kirsty's case study years ago when she was doing her massage therapy course! She never made me feel vulnerable and when I gazed at the floor through the handy hole in the head of the massage bed I swore she was leaving yellow footprints on the carpet with her stockinged feet! I maintain to this day that I was seeing her 'aura'. Am sure yellow= healing somewhere in the world!

Just wish me luck and I will try and endeavour to ask only for the back massage and not be tempted into having one of the 'specials' which everyone knows is just a ploy to grab many bucks from clients while making them lounge around naked wearing nothing but paper pants!

Hair Don't

Of course I blame it all on Sparkle.

If she hadn't tried so hard to tempt me to stay in Blighty by booking an appointment with her favourite hairdresser then I wouldn't be in this mess now!

Now all those that know me know that I am not adverse to clipping my hair into different shapes and dyeing it various shades from hot pink to near-on ebony. It started years ago when Nicky and I used to buy copious amounts of shaders and toners from the Broadway and attempt to transform our hair into the pictures on the sachets (we never did grasp the fact that the colour change wouldn't automatically turn our hair into the actual picture replicating cut, texture and pretty model like faces!). I also had never until that fateful day in May, come away from the hairdressers and not 'improved' on the cut by snipping further bits from their unlevel efforts.

Sparkles hairdresser Jamie, is no such amateur though. He turned me into a sleek goddess in just under four hours (ah, I see now. I have only ever allowed 45 mins to get myself coiffed). So as I became accustomed to the bouncy, shiny highlighted hair, I became more reluctant to change his vision. To the point last week when I looked at my trailer trash roots and tired, flat, grown out fringe and decided to take drastic action.

Of course I couldn't go to a proper hairdresser. Lord knows you can't trust them. I have spent my adult life searching for the holy grail in hair design to know that two Jamie's don't exist. So I did the next best thing. I found Dave's sharpest scissors (at least I have come a long way from the days when I would take to my wee brothers hair with gusto and a pair of pinking shears! They did give a delightful zigzag effect though!) and bought a job lot of hairdye.

The trimming went fine enough and I managed to copy Jamies original work reasonably well (in an amateur way at least) but the hairdyeing was another matter. I have long thick hair and so dyeing it is a labourious task in itself. Especially when you have to dye it, wait twenty minutes, rinse, towel dry and then highlight. Needless to say I got bored towards the end and had to dance around singing into the highlighting wand to keep myself amused. During an especially soul rendering version of The Choirboys 'Run to Paradise' I managed to give myself a 'badger streak'! A horizontal streak of blonde about a centimetre away from my hairline. Tres chic.

However am considering keeping it for a while as am growing strangely attached to it's imperfectness! Although on second thoughts maybe all I need is regular (three monthly) visits back to Plymouth for the weekend to visit Jamie. I need someone to save my poor hair from a life of ridicule.

How?

A girl at work told me about a friend who lost her voice but didn't realise until she arrived at work for an afternoon shift and tried, unsuccessfully, to speak. How could you not realise that you have no voice until lunchtime?

Does no one talk to themselves anymore?