Current Mood: Mad

I am sick to death of the current state of our NHS. Since when did it become acceptable to let a person who may have cancer (who had it in the past) to wait a ridiculous amount of time to get an important scan done? Since when did it become acceptable for someone to be told to go to get their scan results on a certain date, turn up to be told the results aren’t in and to come back next week? Since when did it become acceptable to have to wait for another scan to find out what strain of cancer they have? Since when did it become acceptable for someone to wait so ridiculously long, I’m talking months now to find out what strain of cancer she has and she still hasn’t started the treatment?? In this time her cancer has spread to two other parts of her body and the waiting is bloody stupid and it makes me soooo angry. It really does. You know you have cancer but nothing is being done (other than being prescribed painkillers) and in the meantime your health is getting worse.

Then there’s this spreading of MRSA and C-difficile, what happened to being saved by the NHS? You should go into hospital to get better, it seems like more often than not you end up getting worse before getting better, sometimes, not even getting better!!

Then there’s the problem about the response time from ambulances to patients who call 999.  Maybe that’s because our trained paramedics are too busy wasting time having to sit with patients inside the A&E department until they are ‘passed on’ to hospital staff. So while a paramedic is standing next to a patient (who probably isn’t life threateningly ill and probably is one of the time wasters who call 999 basically wanting a bed for the night) someone, somewhere is having a heart attack, stroke or has difficulty breathing/stopped breathing and it means they need to wait longer than they need to for an ambulance. Thank goodness for the first responders, but it shouldn’t be this way.

Our NHS is so messed up, I think many people would rather sit and suffer at home rather than endure the treatment you get (or won’t get, as the case sometimes is). I understand they are stretched for staff, I understand no one is perfect etc but we rely on this service for our health, our money goes into this service and what’s to show for it?

It makes me sick.

I’ve had a chest cold and it sure is dragging, I’m still coughing, last night and this morning I have been sick with it, makes you feel bloody awful.

I had a one-to-one meeting with my boss towards the end of last week, a personal development plan, basically talking about how your year has been and plans for next year etc… it was like a school report but reading between the lines I got an A* and need to ask my dad for more pocket money. :-p

I say that, but last night I was called into the managers office and was asked to bring my P45 with me… I was up in the communal lounge looking through the photos from all the years and found some of my deputy sporting all sorts of different hairstyles and fashion, dare I say, disasters. :-p I sent the photos down the office and my colleague tells me I have been called into her office, so I go downstairs and ask her if she’d like my locker key as well and we all started laughing.

I almost did something awful last night, there’s one tenant who’s a double amputee - has no legs - I walk into her flat and she’s smoking. Sometimes when I see people smoking I make small comments and last night I was about to say to her, “you shouldn’t smoke, it’ll stump your growth” but thankfully I stopped myself, my brain got into gear just in time! Although, knowing that tenant, she’d have laughed at the comment, but still, how embarrassing would it have been if I said that? Would have wanted the ground to swallow me. v_v

My printer is driving me simple. I mean seriously. When I bought a Kodak ESP 5 a few weeks ago for £80, I thought I was getting a good bargain but it has turned into a huge disappointment and looks like it was a waste of money. First impressions were great. I managed to calibrate the printer. All ok. But then I try to print and the printer decides to throw a huge hissy fit. Everything is installed ok but it keeps saying the paper edge cannot be recognised and spits the paper back out. It’s the right paper, I’ve tried both photo paper and ‘regular’ normal paper but the printer is having none of it. If it’s not saying the paper edge cannot be recognised then it moans that the paper is jammed when it isn’t. Then it goes into a frenzy of ’sucking up’ the paper from the tray and destroying it as it flies back out.

It has successfully printed a few sheets of paper but 99% of the time I get bloody error messages and yesterday it drove me so crazy I switched it off, ran to my room and cried. I can’t say I was in a good emotional state yesterday anyway but this really did press all my wrong buttons.

I have contacted Kodak support but they have been as helpful as throwing a drowning man both ends of the same rope. Useless! I have made sure the paper is in the tray correctly. I have taken out the printerhead, all the ink etc and tried again. I replied to say I was still having trouble and they send me a message back saying “you claim that there is nothing wrong in the functionality of the All In One Printer and that is seen as a positive”. *sigh*

I haven’t touched the printer today. It just makes me so mad just thinking about it.

Hey!! Yes… I’m still here. Sorry, just been really busy and all that. Well, I went to Callum’s this weekend for his Birthday. He turned 18. He’s a man now and has the legal right to go out and get drunk if he chooses to do that!

I’m still in my job. Kinda. Well, my contract ends on Friday but haven’t heard back about the job share yet… so, this time next week, I could be casual, temp or permanent.

Providing first aid at the Eisteddfod on Wednesday and Thursday. It’s one of the largest culture festival in Europe and it’s something huge in Wales and it’s estimated 160,000 people per day will be there. It’s held in Cardiff this year - literature, music and performed for 7 days and the British Red Cross and St. John’s are providing first aid cover, and we’ll be working together. It’s the biggest event the Red Cross has been a part of for a while.

Anyway I’m going to bed. Bubye for now!

I’ve been eating quite a bit recently and I think it may be comfort eating because I haven’t felt all that great. Tenants at work have been a little… mean… about my figure and really, sometimes it feels like the older they get the younger they act. One of the tenants asked if I was pregnant the other day. Another asked what medication I am on as I have put on a lot of weight. Then on Friday I was walking past a few tenants and they say, to each other, as I am walking directly past them and they know I can hear, “gosh hasn’t she put on a lot of weight?” then they were talking about how fat I am.

Lovely, isn’t it? Gives you a real confidence boost!

Maybe they are justified in commenting, it’s not very nice - but it’s the truth. I weighed myself the other day and I have put on 7lbs. Not a horrific amount but still - I have put on some weight. You’d have thought with the amount of walking we gotta do at work I’d be falling down a drain. Someday I’m going to wear one of these things that monitor how many steps you walk.

… because that’ll be just weird.

Gawd I’m soooo stressed. And tired. And irritable. And just generally in a bad mood, so it seems. I’m also in pain too. I think I may have hurt my elbow when using the hoist at work today. Think I used my arm a bit too much with the hoist and stretched a muscle or something so it hurts to bend my arm but it’ll be alright.
Work has been busy this week. A new tenant. Actually, two. No, three! Three new tenants. Two of them were birds though. A tiny little sparrow got trapped between one of the firedoors. How on earth it got there is anyones guess as we haven’t got a clue. My boss phoned up the RSPB but they said they couldn’t get there until the day after so my boss got out the screwdrivers and got the bird out and put Chirpy in the office in a box with shredded paper, something to drink and some food. Boss even went outside to get the little fella a worm and he was taken to a sancturay - we heard today that the bird was released.

Another bird was found this morning, outside one of the flats. It seems it was attacked or something because it couldn’t fly and apparently when my boss went to pick the bird up he moved away or something… the boss put the bird under her wings (so to speak) and kept it in the office and phoned up the RSPB and someone collected it. They said it doesn’t look good for the bird because it was unable to fly..

A lot of paperwork this week. Phewwwwy!! Assessment this, assessment that. Admission forms (for those who have had to go to hospital) as well as the daily report forms. The poor trees that have to suffer because of the city council.

Tomorrow I’m helping out at a community centre. The place I work are setting up a stall that have bits and pieces from the tenants so we can sell, and put the money we make into their fund which goes towards trips etc. It took a good few weeks sorting out all the things we were given. From tables to cooking utensils to mexican hats to clothes such as shirts, trousers, skirts and underpants/knickers - which went into the bin. Don’t know about anyone else but I wouldn’t like to buy a second hand pair of undies. Overall there’s a lot of good stuff there. Someone recently passed away and their relative didn’t want any of the things left over in the flat and she gave them all to us, many of the things were brand new and it would be a shame for them to end up in the trash, which is where they would have gone.

On Sunday it looks like I’m providing first aid cover in Cardiff. There’s a marathon and I hope for the competitors sake the weather will be decent for them, better than it has been for the past two days - weather here has been absolutely crap.

Ok well today I have been doing a lot of research about joining the ambulance service. I joined a forum namely ‘Ambulance999′ and the information in the ‘Joining the NHS’ forum is very, very helpful indeed. I haven’t posted in the forum but am sure if I have any questions there will be people there to advise me.

I got a bit more information about the course in Swansea. It’s the nearest university that offers the
Paramedic Science course and it’s fulltime for 2 years. I need 5 GCSEs including Maths & Science and English/Welsh Language at grade C or above - which I have. But, they also want AS/A Level grades that total up 160 UCAS points - which I don’t have. I have 140 points. Also, they don’t involve a science, so that’s something I need to work towards…

One of the local colleges offers a Human Biology AS/A Level course and that’s available in the evenings. Part time, I guess, which is good, if I can carry on working… but my shift patterns change soooo I dunno. =/

I also need a C1 driving license and have just checked and I can apply for that now (18+) by the looks of it… but I’ve been told it costs an arm and a leg, into the thousands, so that’ll have to wait… Some courses provide it’s students with the C1 driving license but not at Swansea.

I could go in the traditional way - making my way up from ambulance care assistant but as time goes on it’s becoming difficult to get into the service that way and it may come to a stage where less technicians will be recruited. So it’s best to go the university way…

Hmm… just needed to get this out in words, so I can look back at it later. It all really depends on what happens in August. If I stay on, and if the lady I’m covering for does decide to leave, I’ll apply for the job and work for a while to get my monies up, I also enjoy the work. If possible, I may go into education too. If the lady doesn’t decide to leave, then the ‘casual’ pay may not be enough so I’ll go back into education.

Will see what happens. =/

I am seriously considering trying therapy. A few friends have mentioned it to me in the past and I have been thinking about it but each time I just let the fear take over and do nothing more but I know I need to break through that fear and do something about it, otherwise the intense feelings I go through will end up being the death of me.

In this blog I rarely talk about how I’m feeling. I know, I should, a few people who read this blog have told me I should make it a lot more personal and I am trying.

There are certain issues that I am trying to get past but whatever I do, they’re always there and I hope they’ll just go away but truth is, it’s not happening. I feel a lot of bad feeling towards myself, self hate, to the extreme. It goes back to my childhood, family life, and people who hurt me, the pain doesn’t go away. Most recently my step-mum’s death, well, I say recently, but that was in 2006, it still feels like yesterday and the horrible memories of the last few weeks of her life will remain with me forever. The guilt eats me up. Whenever people say they feel guilty over what they could have done before a loved one died I always say, “Feeling guilty isn’t going to solve anything”, and I know that’s true but I just can’t get it into my thick head. Feels like I deserve the pain. It feels like I should be suffering, because if I acted sooner than I did, my step-mum might still be here today and that feeling rips me apart.

My little baby Sam died in Jan this year too. It’s just so hard. He may have been a dog but he was like my best friend and losing my step-mum, then my dog, plus something happened in December which really messed me up, which I don’t feel like talking about. It’s just too much.

I’m sorry. I’m whining, but I needed to vent somewhere. I’m sick of unloading my crap onto my friends, I feel like a nuscence all the time even tho they say I’m not. It feels like therapy is the best way to go. I’ll type up more later.

Ha, yes, it just gets better.

Yesterday I was talking to a tenant and her friend who was visiting, in her flat. This tenant had a bad chest infection and her friend said, “we are waiting for a coughing fit”. I *totally* misinterpreted what she said and I thought she meant “coffin fit” It didn’t click until about 2 hours afterwards and I was pretty embarrassed. My brain has a lot to answer for.