I'm Not Asleep, My Eyes Are Just Closed

I have accused my engineer sister of being a bona fide geek. Unfortunately, I am a closet geek, so in the time-honoured tradition of geeks everywhere, I shall be making a list. This is because I have two days off work (which accounts for my unusual good humour) and have rediscovered an interest in music and books after many months of being sick of it all. (Also because I have two sisters with blogs and am always cribbing ideas off them.) This month I've been listening to: Monster - THE AUTOMATIC . Four excitable Welshmen, one demented loon and lots of ace tunes. Mardy Bum - ARCTIC MONKEYS . Aaahh, yes, it is a rather sweet, affectionate song. When The Sun Goes Down - ARCTIC MONKEYS. Somehow reminds me of Sublime. Wires - ATHLETE. If you don't cry at Joel Pott's account of the difficult birth of his baby girl, you've got a heart of stone! Supermassive Black Hole - MUSE . Always slightly bonkers, is our Muse, but always delivers. Maneater - NELLY FURTADO . I always thou

My family has always been a strong influence in my life, so much so that when the oppurtunity came along, I moved 7,000 miles to step away from underneath their shadow. Striking out on my own was great and it gave me the chance to discover my own interests and have my own opinions without wondering if it was actually my own family's opinions that I was regurgitating. After all that running away, I have realised that my family is my rock and yes, they have strongly shaped and influenced who I have become today. And I do realise that my family ain't that bad - in fact, they're damn good, and I'm lucky to have them. Distance has helped us appreciate each other more and see each other as individual human beings, rather than the bossy older sister or the whiny younger one. So, I am always dead proud of any of my siblings achievements because I know they're good and I know they deserve it. I don't always say it, because intimate feelings are something we're still

I have come to the conclusion that there are a lot of crazy people in the world. I don't mean the ones with a certifiable mental health condition, but people who walk about in normal society who nobody think are crazy, but somehow they're always off their rocker when they turn up to A&E. People pretending to be unconscious or having a fit, hyperventilating, calling an ambulance then refusing to say why they called, calling an ambulance because they hurt their hand punching a wall, crying because they don't like needles when they've got tattoos all over their body, complaining of vaginal bleed when they're having their period, smoking 40 cigarettes a day then complaining that they're short of breath, slumping in a wheelchair because they're allegedly too ill to walk then promptly running outside to fight with which ever relative or 'friend' who has turned up - they're all fucking mad, I tell you and it's one o'clock in the morning and

There's nothing like someone vomiting profusely in front of you to make you want to retch yourself. It's the watery kind and the ones that come straight through the nose that makes me ill. I don't mind so much when they vomit chunks out or when they vomit their half-digested blood out. It's all the green-yellow water spewing out like Linda Blair in The Exorcist that makes me want to hurl myself. Faeces I can pretty much deal with. Blood - I hardly bat an eye. But watery vomit.......euurrrghh, I feel nauseous even talking about it. I tried hard not to spill any of the vomit I was carrying while I retched down the corridor towards the sluice. I think it reminds me too much of my own vomiting experiences. It has been four months now and I still haven't managed to stomach a curry. Damn that Spices Curry House!

Just glad to say that I can finally open my mouth and chew properly now. I've a bit of a dicky jaw anyway, and it has been stuck a couple of times, especially when I've been grinding my teeth in my sleep. Usually occurs in periods of stress but it always goes back to normal within a few days. Only gets embarrassing when I dribble food down my chin because I can't open my mouth wide enough to admit a spoon and whatever I've piled on top of it. I've been stressing about jobs (of which I still have none in August), my impending assessment and my unfinished audit (the freaking#$%!). So plenty of teeth grinding at night made worse by a confused patient smacking me in the jaw a few days ago. Not hard enough to leave a mark but hard enough to leave me feeling dazed and for my jaw to start clicking. Then of course I thought of trying to see if I could fix it myself by stretching my jaw as wide as I could and poking and prodding at my temporo-mandibular joint. Of course I en

Good intentions My car broke down on the way to work two and a half months after I bought it from those cowboy salesmen, Carcraft. Never having owned a car before, much less expect it to break down on me, I panicked. If you've read my first post ( Why I Hate Driving.... ), you'll know how much I hate driving and all that comes with it. I drive 50 miles each way every day to work and it's no joke to have your car break down in the middle of nowhere. To cut a long story short, I had to get the RAC out, but luckily my car was easily sorted and I could safely drive to work. I was so grateful as to the lovely, reassuring way I was treated, both by the call operator and the mechanic who came to sort my car. I felt like a right idiot for panicking but I thought, "This must be how some patients feel when they come in all scared to A&E." I try hard to listen and empathise with all my patients but it's sometimes hard to keep your cool when you feel like that person

Had a good day at work yesterday. It was good because I had a run of interesting yet straightforward to manage patients, (bar the second last one) and a bit of cheeky banter with my current fancy man. 'Fancy man' doesn't mean a man who is a fop or a dandy. It is a term my friend came up with to describe a certain gentleman who provides a single young lady with some amusing diversions, while yet not having any serious intentions towards him. You could call it a sort of morale booster, a little something you look forward to at work and above all, he must be someone whom everyone else goes, "HIM?! You fancy him?!?" Yes, chain-smoking man is a rather unlikely candidate, (see It's Raining Men? ) but there's no logic or reasoning for things like this. I used to fancy a ginger, bearded microbiology registrar - a rather unglamorous specialty and hair colour- but I thought he had a touch of the Indiana Jones about him. Sure, you'd expect somebody like a surgeon