I need a holiday

It's good to be on Days again, though have had two really horrible ones in a row. Have been avoiding blogging as don't feel motivated enough to craft my sentences properly. However need some kind of outlet for the things which have been happening at work so here goes the incoherent account, more for my own records than anyone's reading pleasure. Perhaps I'll go even lazier and put it in point form...

Finished my old job on a night shift on the 4th of March, when two extremely sick children came in at the same time - 07:00, the worst time to be admitted to hospital because that's when the nurses are changing over shifts, so they are all avoiding doing anything. One turned out to have pneumococcal sepsis/meningitis and the other staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome. Both ended up being transferred to Intensive Care. The former patient is now on our ward at the Childrens' Hospital, and will almost certainly be disabled for life. It seems selfish to say in the same breath, but I think I may be traumatised for life from my experience dealing with her (and her family). But of course, a doctor's feelings are of no importance. Just blame the doctor when things go wrong. Even if there was never a chance of intact survival.

So I went from a crazy night shift, to my new job, arriving several hours late for Induction, because I missed the train trying to sort the sick patients out. Then it was work as normal the next day, with no time to recover (one usually gets a day off post-nights) and nobody really to talk to about what had happened in my last night shift. Then I had to do a weekend of nights at my new job without really knowing my way round the hospital. This was all shortly after the whole job interview run (I had three, including one on the day of that fateful night shift, so I basically hadn't really slept from the night of the 3rd or March until the night of the 5th, because they wouldn't let me have any time off). I survived the weekend, but came down with a bilateral purulent conjunctivitis, and a cough (which I still have) so that I lost my voice and physically had trouble trying to call in sick. And then I was on night shifts again from the 17th to the 20th of March. On the 17th I set a new personal record of 13 A&E reviews overnight, admitting 11 out of the 13 patients, some of whom were pretty unwell. Then I had a weekend off, during which we (M&I) saw a terrific Ansel Adams exhibition and watched 'Bleu' from Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colours trilogy. I highly recommend both. And then it was on-call for Easter Monday, which left me exhausted and all ready (not) to start another week today. And today was a complete nightmare, involving me running around trying to single-handedly sort out all the patients sent round from A&E to a Surgical ward (where they don't have the appropriate equipment or trained nurses for common Medical procedures such as lumbar puncture) without having been properly resuscitated. Just because all the juniors were either off sick or in Teaching all day and the other registrar was busy with a dying teenager. See, when I whinge about work I just sound like a completely evil heartless person. It's the sort of thing you wouldn't really see in a TV medical drama, like they are in the middle of a big resuscitation and then someone's bleep goes off and they can't find a phone (that isn't in use) to answer it or it's a wrong number. Twice. Stupid things like that that stop you from getting your work done. Or you try and drink lots of water so you have to go to the loo, because that's the only time you'll ever get to sit down. And then there is a combination lock on the staff toilet that you don't know the code to...

And now it's almost April. The last time I looked it was the 2nd of March.