Healing

I am now on a annual leave, booked long, long ago. This time it feels restful. Yes, the pressure is still on, staff numbers down, cases rising but my heart is stronger now.

We have been offered, and I have taken advantage, of a series of sessions with a counsellor trained in dealing with PTSD. By video link with others from the department. We have had our first session. It was useful.

Yesterday we had a warm, sunny day. It was literally balmy. No coat required for a walk over the downs. A different route this time but as beautiful.

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  Iconic view of the Seven Sisters with the fishermen’s cottages in the foreground. Backdrop for many a film and TV drama.

In the Cuckmere Haven area we saw a kingfisher. So bold and bright. He flitted up and down the river, splashed about and stood still long enough for all of us to get a good look at him through my wonderful new binoculars. (Christmas pressie from the WC). There was a lot of bird activity. Herons, egrets, geese, wading birds and some little ones flying around. There is a long way for me to go before any of these beasties can be identified, but it is fun looking.

The WC has been to his mum’s house with his siblings. He brought home an amazing Jones 365 sewing machine which his sister has gifted to me. We think it is a semi-industrial one. It weighs a ton. She also sent me a beautiful sewing box with a revolving wooden lid on legs. I was really touched.

Artist sister has now started calling it ‘our machine’ which will be put to use making accessories for the house in France. We are going to do some fabric printing this week and some French….very organised.

So things are settling for now. Mum gets her COJAB today and that is another blessing.

Stay safe x

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Things got a little worse

I tested positive just over a week ago. Despite having had the first jab. It came the day after a truly horrible shift in which we were unable to save the life of someone who not only had Covid-19, but had been found on the floor of his warden controlled flat after at least three days. Yes, I have raised the issue with varies authorities. This one was avoidable.

The following day I tested negative at the local government testing centre.

My level of resilience is high, very high, but coupled with the constant cough, fatigue, headache and upset gut it all started to fester in my head. By day four, it all came in on me. I sobbed. The image of the man playing over in my head. My level of anger that it could have been avoided. The fact that I had been isolating in my own home and I am a direct threat to the health of my bubble.

Work would not let me come back as I still had symptoms.

Then at the end of the week, the WC lost his mum. At 90 she was as sharp as a tack. She did have underlying illnesses, but she tested positive in hospital. She never made it out.

So for the beginning to 2021, this has been gruelling. My Sister in Australia tells me it is the year of the Ox in the Chinese zodiac. Slow and steady. I think we all need a slow and steady year.

I had my second jab and work is letting me go back tomorrow. I was really not looking forward to it until today. I have had time to recover a bit.

The sun is shining and three of our bubble are going for a walk on the downs.

Stay safe, wherever you are.

I wrote this on my Facebook page on Monday.

On a recent shift in resus my awesome colleagues and I looked after 12 people. Three tested negative. On top of the pressure to treat and move people to wards, we had two cardiac arrests and one intubation. It is officially a four adult bed unit. We had to use the children’s bays. But people still rock up to A&E with no masks, for piddling reasons, moan, are rude and occasionally aggressive. I walked more than 12 KILOMETERS on that shift. I couldn’t speak when I got home. But when I do get home, I see no one. First I shower, change, anti bac all my kit, again. Wash my clothes and then I can see my family. Having said that though, I haven’t seen my own daughters for over a year now. All because of this pandemic.

This pandemic is so real, and shame on all of those who selfishly endanger the lives of people by refusing to protect themselves and others by not complying with what are really very simple rules.

I spent the next day resting and keeping to myself. I have three more shifts to do this week. I am tired. I feel low, and am often angry. Not a good way to feel.

COJAB

This morning early, my team leader texted to say numbers at the local Covid clinic were small, so get down there. I did and have had my COJAB part one. Very happy, proud, relieved and just goddamned grateful.

How to avoid stacking logs….

Hello friends. As we lurch towards the end of the year, with the new variant of Covid-19 rapidly spreading throughout the population of the south east, I find myself with the urge to write my blog.

This may have something to do with the fact that I have just had 2 huge bags of logs tipped onto the driveway, it is threatening rain, we can’t actually get out of the front gate and they all need to be stacked. But they will have to wait until after a proper coffee and a blog entry.

Since the last one many things have happened.

In the summer, artist sister, the WC, AS’s partner and I went to France and bought a house. It was in fact a long drawn out process that lasted until the beginning of December, but with Our Sister in Australia, we were fortunate enough to fulfil a long held dream. A place where we could be together, obviously not every minute of every day, but more than we ever have before. (We were raised in deepest darkest Africa/Ireland/PNG/Toowoomba and deposited in various locations across the planet for schooling and as a result of directions we took after that, have not lived near each other never mind together as siblings for most of our lives).

Now as we have all embraced our silver hair – long line of silver foxes in our family – we plan to spend some of our silver years painting, pottering and breathing. When we can bloody get there.

I don’t actually have a picture to show you. But it is pretty, with green shutters and lavender in the garden, a fig tree and a kiwi vine. There is a studio attached for artist sister to use and it is in a tiny, quiet hamlet near sunflower fields. Of course, seeing it in the summer and actually being there in winter might be very different, but we are all excited for the VIRUS to be contained and borders open again.

Other news is that Mum is still a bit batty and is convinced she and the other inhabitants of their block of flats are in their own lockdown, independent of the rest of the nation. She often says ‘we are in lockdown here’ as if they have barricaded themselves from the world, a la Les Misérables, with chairs stacked against the door, hankies and headscarves fluttering from windows and a resilience not seen seen since the resistance in WWII. Then she tells me she has been over to Waitrose and bought some lovely soup.

On a more serious note, today she has her first Covid injection and I have one booked for early January. It’s tough, to do it or not? I am so front line I feel it’s crazy not to. More for those around me, but not all agree.

I became a Sister, not of holy orders, but of the navy uniform. Very happy although I have a lot to do to really fit into the role.

I turned 60 and celebrated with a 10k walk across the downs with the dog and the WC.

The WC and Juno pounding on ahead of me

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We went to Suffolk

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Lockdown was sometimes boring, Moss liked to help the WC with his painting jobs and I embroidered a bit more.

In many ways my life has not changed this year. I still work, we are still short of nurses. I feel very supported at work and home. Also, I’m grateful that we have all to date, remained well. I think it have reinforced my belief that we can all live with less, be more resourceful and focus on the little things.

The most difficult and painful thing has been not being able to see my lovely, loved, very, very missed daughters. As soon as borders open I am off to hug those babies.

I do wish everyone a safe, healthy and happy 2021.

A goat, a beehive and 20,000 trees (and a bit of bigging myself up…..)

For Christmas, the WC and I gave my girls a goat and a beehive respectively. Through Oxfam, in their names, the items were bought for a needy family somewhere. It’s something I have felt strongly about all their lives. Christmas is to me a time to share what we have and remember that not everyone has the basics in life.

Roll on and eldest, who works in Tokyo, has been brain-storming with colleagues and the CEO of the large international company she works for to come up with ways to mark a 10th anniversary event for the staff. Daughter mentioned the goat to the CEO. He loved the idea. The company is now looking to buy 20,000 trees for a global reforestation initiative on behalf of the staff.

Daughter told me that the boss was impressed that I had raised them to realise that giving something to someone who needs help is a better present that some short lived shiny thing. She told me she was proud of having a mum like me. I can tell you peeps, it was a very emotional moment.

And here’s to the planet…. 20,000 trees will not change the world, but it will help.

Golden eyed pigeon

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Over the last few weeks I have been working on this bird. A step away from yarny things and I loved the whole process. When in France, artist sister and I visited a branch of Emmaus in Ruffec. We got our days and times very wrong. It was not open to the public, but someone took pity on two hapless women and let us in. It was a veritable Aladdin’s cave of used items. We found off-cuts of linen, possibly a tablecloth. I dyed mine when we got home. That was a disaster. What I hoped would be olive green turned out like camouflage. Not to be deterred I got an image of a pigeon from the ‘net and fiddled with it a bit. Then started with chain stitch. I am rubbish at colours so artist sister said to choose some blues and browns, but there were hardly any of the latter in the stash I had, so I went with grey. She also said to put all the other colours away. That works. I had an attempt at satin stitch and a long and short stitch but am not good at either. But, what amazed me is that I kept on working even until the wee hours last night, to finish it.

I am very happy with it. It is my first embroidery and first finished anything in a long time. It is big enough to be a cushion and mum it seems knows all about cushion making. I am going to get her to help me, which will be very good for both of us.

I acquired a piece of black felt in a charity shop here for £1 and am about to work out my next design.

Sitting in the morning shade

waiting for the temperature to soar. It reached 35 outside the house yesterday. Officially, I am writing reflections for my first ever nurse revalidation. It means I will have been qualified three years soon and we have to check in to prove we are still fit to practice. In fact, I am just enjoying the sound of the gulls and a solitary plane overheard.

The close has seen an explosion of baby gulls. Many pairs having two babies this year. I still cannot work out where the eggs are laid and where the babies are reared until they can stand on the roofs with their parents. All live on steeply sloped roofs, a gutter maybe? We don’t seem to get any gulls. Moss might be a deterrent.

We, the WC, artist sister, her partner and I had a road trip to France recently. It seems we got a window before the next lockdown happens. Sun and sunflowers are my lasting impression. Stone houses with cool interiors and swallows everywhere. Where we stayed, swallows were flying through a round window of a barn to their nests. When my sister was sitting in the garden, one bird flew in and circled the living room before flitting out. In some cultures, swallows are allowed to nest in the home. Birds and humans giving each other space.

Standing up

on a paddle board is quite a thrill, a wobbly thrill to be fair but it is fun. Artist sis and I have been out on the Cuckmere River with some of my work family… after three night shifts too. I then did a solo trip and got onto my feet. A whole new awareness of rivers and waterways has begun. A whole new group of people who paddle and kayak too.

We are though a bit weather wary and have no life jackets as yet, so have not ventured out to sea. With the promise of hot weather over the next week, that might just happen. A fried has promised to take me around the pier. Now that is exciting.