The week that was

It's now been about a week since I last posted, and how much can happen in a week, so of which has needed a bit of time for me to be able to talk about easily (ish).

The week started lovely with another trip to Cirencester to meet up with Lorri for dinner.  We went to a wonderful Indian restuarant, and had a lovely time.  And Lorri treated me as an early birthday pressie, since we aren't sure if she's likely to see me nearer the time.

Tuesday was a quiet night in, when I finally got round to finishing Ru's wristwarmers, (well, I say finish, I haven't quite got round to sewing in the tails).  It was a huge relief, really happy with the way they look, but am very glad to be moving onto something new, and more colourful.  Which I did, I started my latest project, a little vest for Morgan.

Then Wednesday came...  My heart starts beating faster everytime I even think about what happened on that day.  How much it changed everything.  All the negative emotions that well up in me.  I was going on a hospice visit, out in the back of beyond, and on a windy, confusing, unfamiliar country lane, I crashed my car.  I did not realise that the road wasn't a straight  road, but was actually a t-junction until too late.  I slammed on the brakes, and for the briefest time, I thought to myself, it's going to be close, I'm going to stop, I'll be shaken, but everything will be okay.  But then... I don't think I even realised until I was sitting in my car, smoke filling the air and the airbag deflating in front of me, that I couldn't avoid it.  The road was wet and slippery, and it was a slight downhill.  I had crashed into another car.  Everyone is mostly okay.  The other lady seemed to have a seatbelt injury,  and my passenger hurt her ankle somehow.  And me, I have a small graze on my knee, and a bruise from the seatbelt (I assume) and have for the last few days, some muscular pain across my chest.  My beloved Ernie is much worse for wear, and everyone who has seen him said they thought he'd be a write off, but I'm still waiting to hear from the insurance company with regards to this.   Everyone has been calm, patient and effecient.  All the emergancy services that attended the scene were fantastic and helpful.  I was so shocked and just a tad hysterical and mostly useless, so I am very grateful indeed for all the help I recieved.  And I'm very grateful for all my fantastic friends, both near and far who have been supportive and been there for me, reassuring, caring and wonderful.  There's just so much I could say about the day, and go into so much more detail, but it's hard, and I don't really have the energy to deal with it, and I don't think I particularly need to.  So that's all I'm going to say about the incident.

And for now, that's all I'm going to say about the week.  There's so much more that's happened since, so I'll tackle that tomorrow :)

Blue Hands

What a wonderful, busy, exhausting weekend, full of colour, laughing, experimenting and friends, both old and new.  On Saturday, I went to a hand-dye your own wool, at my favouritest wool shop, Get Knitted in Bristol.  And what wonderous fun it was.  It was run by Jeni, from Fyberspates (check her stuff out, absolutely stunning!) and she was so patient, generous and knowledgable.  She took us through the basics of hand-painting wool, and just allowed us all to experiment with different yarns and colours and effects.  I have to admit, I'm slightly jealous of some of the amazing things that some of the other ladies came up with, but only slightly, because I am just soooo proud of my own little collection.  The course covered three yarns (a lace, a sock and a double/chunky) but I managed to come away with eight, and only paying £5 extra for one skein, as Jeni was kind enough to give us some freebies.  So here's a little run down of the dying process:

 

Pre-soak yarn and lay out on suitable surface

 

Wear gloves (!) and mix up dye and fixer in steamy hot water

 

Start painting!

 

And a little more (this being my neighbour who was doing the same colours as me)

 

Ensure wool all covered (assuming that's what you want!) and a good bit of table coverage for good measure!

 

Have a nosy around at everyone else!  Oh and get a bag ready, and carefully shove yarn in

Place in steamer until water in bag becomes colourless

 

Allow to cool sufficiently to handle

Rinse thoroughly

 

Allow to dry (a process that will prob only be finished at the end of the week)

Select next yarn to play with!

And repeat

 

and again

And so forth... until:

 

Your clothes horse ends up looking like this, and despite your fairly best efforts with wearing gloves your hands end up like this:

 

Oh dear, what would the patient's say?

They all seem to be taking ages to dry, which is annoying when all you want to do is play!  The dye is fading on my hands, but my cuticles still seem fairly worse for wear!  Ooops! 

I love the colour of my lace skein (the middle row, middle skein).  I spent ages mixing the colours (suggested by Jeni) to get the right colour that I was after.  And I'm very happy with it.  It's only one colour, but with varying pentrance of the dye to get a semi-solid colour effect.  A lovely grapey/mullberry colour.  The green was the less successful colour experiment, I wasn't really wanting such bright limey greens, but I love it all the same!  I was aiming for more natural shades.  

Here are some of the other yarns I liked the looks of:

(some of these are mine)

 

 

I could go on, but I won't!  It is after all beyond my bedtime.  Sweet colourful dreams everyone!

Catching up

Wow, this really is a slippery slope.  Just a few days without posting everyday and then it just gets longer and longer between posts.  Oooops.  There's no particular reason for having not posted for nearly four days, it's a combo of having really dull days followed by very busy days.  And the now usual lack of sleep in Cheltenham making me exhausted.  So here we go, a quick catch up over lunch, and I have loads to say, so let's see how far I get.

I slept absolutely awfully on Sunday night, but fortunately I didn't have anything going on on Monday besides my nine o'clock seminar.  So I yawned my way home and curled up in bed and ended up sleeping for about three hours!  It was soooo needed that I don't feel entirely guilty for avoiding going to the wards and clerking.  I really don't think I would have got much benefit out of it.

Tuesday was by far my busiest day so far this week.  Nine o'clock seminar.  Followed by clerking with a friend.  First clerking I've done in weeks so it was really good to have someone there with me, as (a) kind of obliges me to get on with it! and (b) good for feedback on things that need improving on or are just a little rusty from having not done it for a while.  In the middle of my clerking, one of the other medical students came and dragged me to the corridor.  Just to let me know (at 11am) that I would be having my first exam of the year at 2pm.  Ahh, advance warning always so great!  The organisation here in Cheltenham has been rather questionable!  But there you go.  So after rattling around for a bit at lunchtime, moaning via text to Sarah (thanks for listening!) and trying to get it straight in my head how I felt about it all.  The exam was an observed long case - a new introduction to have them so early in the year this year, but basically the exam format which is responsible for me still being here at medical school rather than being out there in the big bad world, actually being a doctor.  How could I feel anything but negativity toward this exam?  Fortunately, it never really dawned in properly or felt real, so that avoided a lot of the nasty nerves.  I was surprisingly relaxed during the exam, much more so than during the exams last year.  I don't know what to make of it, but I got some very positive feedback, and I got a chance to really talk it through with the doctor who was examining me, and she said "there were no major pass/fail points" which I don't know if that meant I passed overall, or there was no one big thing that I would fail on that I really messed up.... so who knows.  I don't know when I'm likely to find out what I scored/if I passed.  So I'm just in limbo, but feeling relatively happy about it.

Then Tuesday evening I drove to Cirencester to meet up with Lorri and have dinner.  Which was lovely, and just what I needed after the unexpected exam.  I love catching up with Lorri, and she spoils me rotten when we have dinner, taking pity on the poor student.  We have a deal that with my first pay cheque, I'm going to repay the favour, but at this rate, I'm going to have to take her to Paris for a meal or maybe the Ritz or something crazy like that, either way, something big!  Lol!  I'm so lucky to have such amazing friends.  It was an okay meal, Lorri's steak was over cooked, and the humous wasn't humous, but I did have a very very tasty ginger and honey icecream for desert.  Mmmm *licks lips*!  And it was lovely just to be with a friend, and have a really good catch up.  Lorri is working and staying in Swindon at the moment, hence meeting in Cirencester, which is more of less half way between Cheltenham and Swindon, taking us each almost exactly half an hour to get there.  We're planning to do it again next week, choosing a different restaurant this time though.

Yesterday I had about as lazy a day as possible.  I was exhausted and didn't really have anything on in the hospital, so I stayed in bed (in the morning) and in my pjs most of the day.  Watched stuff on my laptop, dozed, and eventually got round to knitting a little bit, making a start on the second wrist warmer.  Eventually at about 5, I decided enough was enough and put some clothes on and forced myself to go to get milk!  Ohhh, it's a tough life I lead. Then in the evening I went with one of my course mates to go see Sherlock Holmes, making the most of Orange Wednesdays and having a cinema about a minute's walk away.  It was pretty good.  Predictably a bit about the violence and explosions.  But I did quite enjoy it, and I've been meaning to see it for ages now.  So can cross it off the list!

And here we are, back to Thursday.  I overslept this morning so was late to my teaching first thing.  Ooops.  Then am about to head in for "on call", whatever that will entail and maybe have some consultant teaching.

So I had better get going.  I have a few more things to say about my weekend, but I will have to leave that for now, but I am well excited about my plans!

Back in stinky Cheltenham

No, it actually does stink, well, in the kitchen at least (full bin and crazy heating.... mmmm, tasty smells there!)

So the delights of being back to Cheltenham, and after a weekend of... well, not much.  I'm really finding it hard to think of things to talk about here that aren't tedious running commentries of my life or moans that I've already had. 

Work was work.  Actually a very barable shift.  Nice patients, nice nurses, enough work to keep me busy and not twiddling my thumbs but not too busy to actually get everything done whilst still chatting to patients.  So that was good.  I honestly really find it hard to say that I enjoy work, I just don't find it a particularly rewarding job, it's just a means to an end.  And it makes me crave being a doctor and doing what I feel passionate about all the more.

This morning I finally got round to getting out of bed early enough to go to my local CofE church, as part of my quest to find a church that will give me what I need/want/think I need out of church.  It was a nice short walk up there, listening to the bells.  Very old school traditional!  It was Candlemas today, so it was interesting to see, as I've never been to a Candlemas  before, but I suppose it wasn't their usual sort of service, so I think I will try to make it back next week and try a more run of the mill kind of mass.  There was a lot of pomp and ceremony, which I do find a little needless in Christianity.  But I did get to take communion, for the first time in years, so that was nice, as I do believe it is an important part of church and practising Christianity.  I definitely left the church feeling very moved, relaxed and content.  I don't know if I learnt anything necessarily faith-strengthening, but I did enjoy it, and I'm hoping next week will be good too.  And they were very friendly and welcoming, so that definitely counts in their favour.

And finally, the wristwarmer is still not done, but very nearly.  I'm just debating on the length of the palm part, but hopefully will finish that tomorrow, along with the thumb, which shouldn't take too long at all.  So yipee, nearly half way!

 

(not entirely sure why I looks so shocked and dazed in this pic... I took it, I knew it was coming... lol!)