Sunday, 19 September 2010

The first update for the new “school year”...

I’ve been back in the UK for 3 weeks now, after a stunning holiday in Austria. I really didn’t want my holiday to end!

My flight back to Newcastle was an adventure. The flight I had booked with Lufthansa meant that I changed planes in Düsseldorf. I only had half an hour to do so, which I had been assured by Lufthansa was no problem (and I agreed since on my way there I had had 3 hours wait and the airport is so tiny there is not much to do!) and I assumed (yeah, I usually know better than to assume things!) that the flight from Vienna wouldn’t be delayed. Ha! I was wrong! We had a delay of 35 minutes and I was sure I wouldn’t make the connection. But once we landed and disembarked I still sprinted the short distance to my connection and found that they had kept the plane back for me! Whew! They had even sent a big bus to take me to the plane (it was rather disconcerting to be the only one in it though). And while the passengers may have glared at me when I eventually climbed on board, we were only 15 minutes later than our original departure time and the pilot made up for this during the flight so we arrived at Newcastle without any delays.

It was rather chilly in Newcastle when we landed, nothing like the summer weather I had just enjoyed in Austria, and there was a huge rainbow over the airport when we arrived which I took for a good omen. And it soon proved to be when I found that not only had my checked-in luggage made it onto the plane, it was also the first one to arrive on the conveyor belt!

As you know, I had just moved into a new flat in Newcastle shortly before the holidays. The flat is lovely and Katie had also moved in by the time I came back. We have managed to decorate it to our taste and are keen to rent it for our remaining two years of study (as just the thought of having to move again is horrifying!). It is also around the corner from the Metro station, a five minute walk from a huge Morrison’s shop, only a 40 minute walk from Uni and our road is between two High streets (which between them have every shop and takeaway you would ever need!). So an ideal location.

And we are a street down from the house that Fiona, Abi, Sahira and Attia (who I met last year in Tees) are sharing so we all walk into Uni together in the mornings, which makes the walk much more enjoyable!

I had a week’s holiday remaining on arriving back. During this time I did 2 days of induction training at Freeman hospital for my new Health Care Assistant (HCA) job. This was rather mundane and consisted of fire safety training, Basic life support (again!), Moving and Handling training and every other training needed in order to comply with the latest regulations. I even had to complete 7 online courses before I could book my first shift.

And my first shift was this last Friday. I did a night shift (19h30-8h00) on the ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) short stay ward in Freeman hospital (a mere 30 minute walk from the flat). It was a very quiet shift since there were only 7 patients overnight in the 30 bed ward. Being a HCA is a really easy job as we are was what previously called an Auxiliary nurse, meaning we help the nursing staff with basic tasks. My shift that night consisted of: doing a tea / coffee round with the trolley at 8pm, finishing patient obs (blood pressure, pulse, temperature, etc.) by 10pm at which time the main lights were switched off in the wards so they could sleep, then washing up the tea stuff, disinfecting and cleaning equipment and commodes (with a horrible chlorine mixture), then at 6am I woke the patients to do obs again (the lights were also switched on at that time but I was still not popular), I then set out their breakfast in the main TV room (just cereals, toast with butter and jam, and tea and coffee – so nothing as exciting as a full-English breakfast!) and bullied them out of bed for their breakfast at 7am, during which time I stripped beds, disinfected the beds and mattresses, then remade them with fresh linen. Since it is a short stay ward the patients didn’t get back into the newly made beds (which were readied for the new influx of short stay patients) and were discharged at 8am (and new surgery patients are admitted again from then onwards).

As you can see, not a very challenging job, but enjoyable as I got to chat to the patients (and then the nursing staff when the patients were asleep) and basically helped out with whatever was needed. The most exciting aspect of the shift was finding an obs machine that worked (they sadly use electronic everything these days so there was no hope of finding manual equipment to take all the obs readings... and only the 4^th machine I found had everything working! I had great fun pasting post-its on the other machines at 3am with explanations about what wasn’t working for the people from the hospital equipment department!) We also had the fire alarm go off at 4am, and since I am the lowest on the staff food chain it was I who ran down 3 flights of stairs as per protocol (meeting other HCA’s on the way) and then waited ½ an hour to be told by security what was happening. But it was nothing exciting, despite the fire-fighters turning up, as a patient in another ward had apparently pushed the fire alarm while wandering around. It means a £900 fine for the hospital though for the (automatic) calling out of response teams for a false alarm. And the nursing staff on the ward will be reprimanded for allowing the patient to wander unsupervised.

And so I survived the shift, I didn’t even feel that tired (even while walking the 30 minutes back to the flat). After breakfast I did go sleep for 5 hours, but still felt fine afterwards.

I am also back at Uni since two weeks. It feels odd being back at lectures, especially when these lectures until December will be our last official theory-only sessions during our course, as from next year it is all practical based until graduation.

There are now over 300 students in fourth year (a combination of Newcastle and Durham students) which makes the lecture halls very full! We also do a lot of PBL (problem based learning) in smaller groups of 10. My group (made up of 11 people) are very nice, and I knew 2 of them before from my accelerated year in 1^st year, and 2 more from Tees last year.

We are now finishing off the nitty gritty left in our medicine theory training, which means that we are being force fed pharmacology (groan!). But the rest of it is interesting. We have already had a session working with asylum seekers, and have some sessions working with interpreters planned too. And this coming Friday I will eventually learn proper suturing (as I am very poor at it, having forgotten everything from a year ago in the interim!)

Last Wednesday we also chose our SSC’s (student selected components) for January – March of next year. This means we could choose places for 6 weeks each in 2 different specialities. I luckily managed to book my first choices... I will be starting Acute and Chronic Pain Management (with a bit of anaesthetics) at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in January, and mid-March will start Clinical Hypnosis at the same hospital. Am really looking forward to that!

Outside of Uni and work I have also been doing a bit of touristy type stuff. I joined the National Trust with Nicola (this allows us free entry into historic houses and garden owned by the trust), and Sunday a week ago we spent the day at Gibside, a stunning Estate near Newcastle, which boasts an 18^th Century Landscape Garden and a lovely chapel (which is still in use) and numerous other buildings (some of which are sadly now only ruins). The weather was perfect, we managed to get a nearly one-on-one tour of the main parts of the property (as there were only two others on the tour with us) and we spent the rest of the day walking around the pathways in the 400 acre property (it is absolutely huge and we only managed the walk around half of it due to time constraints) and enjoying a picnic in the old Green House. I loved hearing about the history of the place, and learning that numerous books have been written about one of the previous owners, Mary Eleanor Bowes a.k.a. “The Unhappy Countess”. And her life story definitely sounds like something out of a period novel! It is through the tour of Gibside that I learnt where the phrases “stoney broke”, “hussy” and “beyond the pale" came from. Very amusing!

The chapel in Greek style, was completed in 1816, and built in memory of George Bowes’ first wife who died after only 2 ½ months of marriage and was apparently the love of his life.

The ruins of Gibside House, which was completed in 1620, only started to fall to ruin after 1950 when the owners at the time had the roof and floor removed (naturally the furniture was already gone) to avoid having to pay taxes on the empty house.

The Long Walk or Avenue is half a mile long and leads from the chapel across the grounds towards the Column to Liberty.

The stables with Palladian facade, were completed in 1751. It was built to impress visitors and hint at the wealth of the owner (since if the stables were this impressive, imagine what the house must look like!) Nothing like a bit of wealthy landowner ego! :)

Nicola and I plan on doing quite a few more excursions visiting other National Trust properties!

Newcastle also had their annual 4-day Heritage open days two weekends ago. I organised for a group of us to have a tour of the Northern Stage (the theatre near the University), and Abi and I also visited the Parish church of St. Andrew, the oldest church in Newcastle, where they apparently hold monthly services in BSL (British Sign Language) for people with hearing disabilities.

Fiona, Sahira and I also had a tour of Grainger Market, which many of you may recall is where I used to buy my fruit and veg in first year. It was an hour long tour and it was amazing how much I missed by not being aware of its history... like the fact that it boasts the oldest (its actually the 2^nd oldest but the oldest closed down a few years ago) and smallest Marks and Spencer’s in existence in the world! Grainger Market celebrates its 175^th anniversary in October.

View over part of Grainger market called the Arcade. This was where the fruit and veg stalls were originally, while the rest of Grainger was called “the flesh market” and sold meat.

The oldest shop still at the market is an optician.

The oldest and smallest Marks and Spencer’s still in existence. It still has ‘Original Penny Bazaar’ written on one side as once all things sold by them only cost a penny each! How times have changed!

The old weigh house where the meat was once weighed is still there, though these days you can get yourself weighed on digital scales for only 20p. And there is always a queue!

I have also started decorating cupcakes as a hobby. Fiona got me interested in this as she is superb at it, and my first attempt was for Nicola’s birthday... I decided on a vegetable garden theme since Nicola loves gardening. I think it worked out quite well, and it was fun to do too, so Fiona and I are planning to do some Halloween themed cupcakes for a Halloween party at the end of October.

My veggie garden for Nicola’s birthday consisted of chocolate cupcakes, covered by Oreo biscuit crumbs (for the earth), and the veggies were radishes, peas in a pod and carrots (all fashioned by me using various sweets). Here I took a (sadly rather blurry) photo before I put them into a cupcake box ready for delivery.

And now I have run out of news to share. The internet at home is still not working as we are waiting for a technician to come out (as apparently the cable in our house is kaput)! After waiting 3 weeks for them first to unblock the line and then get back to us regarding it still not working, we are hopeful that by the beginning of this week we will be online here too. In the meantime I use the internet at the Uni when I am there.

Hope you are all keeping well and I’d love to hear all your news!