This academic year is a bitch. I’ve been talking to the other girls on the course quite a bit and it seems that we are all experiencing similar shit. Of course we are all stressed out about the workload. That goes without saying, but everybody also seems to be going through big periods of transition and stress in their personal lives aswell. Mainly relationship stuff. Like we’re not content with uni attempting death by academia.

Mind you I reckon that the pressure of the course has a knock on effect on most areas of personal life. Thats stating the obvious I suppose. Also there is the fact that the course changes a lot of people. I know it has me. Mainly for the better I hope.

I’m waffling shite really cos Rumple and 2x piggies have gone to football training and little piggy is crashed out already. This is when the guilt sets in that I should be doing something more productive than smoking fags and eating my own body weight in hula hoops.  I have usually got my essays well finished by now. I don’t do last minute atall, I’m far to anal. I just can’t seem to get motivated though this time. I could ask for an extension, which I am entitled to due to being classed as a disabled student, but I really want to avoid that. It just piles on top of the next lot of essays then ( I may have said all of this in previous posts but can’t remember, neither can i be bothered to check)

Whilst doing our placements we have an essay, the ongoing dissertation and IPLP (an interprofessional learning thing thats done online…we get marked for the number and quality of our postings)….by the way, Cellar Door ..if you are reading this, do you have to do IPLP or anything similar?

More hula hoops anyone?

We found out our placements for January today. I’m with the Camhs (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) team, in our city which is a 10 minute drive from my house. Brucey Bonus . I haven’t had any involvement atall with Camhs so far so it will be a new experience. The closest I have been is working with a couple of people who had recently made the transition into adult services.

On a less positive note, things have been a bit fraught in the household this week. We had a family meeting the other night, to have a chat about what we all felt was making things stressful. It has made things better overall, but one thing that did come out is that the piggies and Rumple are a bit pissed off with my course. Big piggy said that I am always doing homework. Rumple had a moan about the fact that I get stressed regarding coursework etc and take it out on him. I was gutted at the time. And really cross. I do feel that I try my best in this house and find myself doing the lions share of the work alongside a really demanding course. I got arsey and said that I felt like they didn’t want me to aspire to do anything. Thats exactly how it seemed. It might not be the actual case, but even so.

I have calmed down about the whole thing now and mulled it over a bit. I have come to the conclusion that theres not a lot I can do about it. Try and stress less when I have a massive workload I suppose (mmm…not easy). I can’t not do my coursework obviously.  I always make sure that I find time to do the piggies reading and cuddles and stuff, whihc again is why I was so pissed off aswell. I explained to them aswell that I’m not perfect…just human and I will get things wrong sometimes.

Anyway, moan over. I knew this year would be intense in every way.

I still have an essay, a presentation and a dissertation to be getting on with. I have a week off next week so will get on with all of them. Honest. Usually I would have at least got the essay out of the way by now. I get things done and out of the way early on. I really can’t get round to it though. I have read loads, collated all my research etc but it’s just the thought of starting that I am dreading. I know the thought of doing it is often worse than the actual doing. But still.

The child nursing students organised a child protection conference yesterday. It was a really good but extremely emotive day. There were speakers from the NSPCC, the safeguarding board, the child abuse unit from the police etc. They did a presentation slide show at the beginning with lots of pictures of little people all bruised, battered and burned. It was so sad.

When the police did their talk the Detective Inspector made some comment about sex offenders having their bits chopped off. For me, it strengthened my position on the fact that sex offenders should receive treatment. The crimes that they commit are heinous. Fact. But chopping off bits/hanging/all of the things that people suggest isnt going to happen. And neither do I think they should. I’m not a fluffy bunny do-gooder or whatever but I have seen the effects of child abuse..both professionally and personally, and I think we need to educate children. Of course. But we also need to step up our work with the perpetrators. Get to the core of the problem. I think that if you can work with one offender and reduce his rate of recidivism then thats however many children that won’t be damaged for life by their actions. I know its not as black and white as all that but it is something that I feel quite strongly about.

I don’t know how to do one of those link things that magically transport you to somebody elses blog. But on Cellar Doors blog (see blog roll) at the mo there is a comment about her/mental health nurses use of dark humour. I would say that 90% of the nurses that I have worked with so far use humour that some people may consider distasteful.  I happen to think that its often a necessary way of coping. This work is really stressful sometimes. As long as patient care is not compromised then I don’t think theres anything wrong with it.

It’s Rumples birthday today. He’s 36. We are actually going out of for a meal together this evening. We haven’t been out together for aaaaages so I am really looking forward to it. We don’t do enough things as a couple without the piggies around, so it will be lovely

Anyway, I am off for a brew. It’s only 7.20 am. Little piggy likes to get up VERY early. He woke me yesterday at 4.50am with a rousing rendition of “ten men went to mow a meadow”. Lovely!

I forgot to say that during the police speech one of the child nursing students asked whether there is a lot of “insane people” that commit these crimes. That went down like a shit sarnie on our row of mental health students. There was also a talk by a lady who had been with CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) through most of her teenage years due to anorexia nervosa. The same child nursing student asked her how much she thought her 8 years of mental health care had cost….the lady had a rough guess….the student nurse then commented that she could have bought three houses for that. And they say mental health nurses are inappropriate???

I feel that I should be doing some reading for my assignment. So what I am doing is avoiding it. I’m really tired today. I did a shift at the hospital this morning, so was up at 5.45. Good old Rumple has taken the piggies out for the afternoon so I can have some time dossing.

This essay is on borderline personality disorder and heroin use. I also have a presentation on wednesday. I have got to do some stuff for my portfolio and then there is the ever looming dissertation. If  I do all this and then there are bugger all jobs at the end of it, I am going to be well pissed off. So far, one person from the cohort in front of me has a job. The Trust is in a right old state. They are reconfiguring and so shuffling everybody around. People are having to reapply for their jobs etc. Shit one.

If all else fails then I am going to keep my fingers crossed that there are jobs at St Andrews Hospitals. They’re forensic services and I quite fancy that.

Nothing else is really happening in my world at the moment. I have no social life, but don’t think I have the energy to do anything about it….I have aged horribly since the beginning of this course aswell I’m sure. All along the streets where my Uni block is, there are pubs and therefore there are lots of people outside giving out promo leaflets. In the first year, I would get bombarded. Now these promo type people avoid eye contact with me and offer me naught.haha.

This actually sounds like quite a moany, dreary post. But believe it or not, I am still loving my training and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Only 10.5 months to go

Upon entering the small piggies warzone of a bedroom this evening, I stood on a miniature railroad thing that has very hard plastic trees and assorted buildings. It killed. If you have never trodden on a thomas the tank mini world, then think standing on a plug. Same pain. Because this hurt a lot, I lost my balance and ended up on my arse in a big pile of spikey lego. That really killed. I am left with some sort of puncture wound on  my right buttock. Therefore I now hate lego and feel it should be banished from the kingdom.

I have a presentation tomorrow. It’s  practice presentation in preperation for the real one in December which is my exam. We are looking at complex care in mental health so I have done mine on Domestic Violence, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and the correlating issues. That sounds quite good, although I don’t think that the presentation itself will. I like to run over it time and time again in my ever anal way, but havent really had time to do that. We have had a week to prepare it. It’s not marked anyway, it’s just to get some feedback so I’m not too fussed.

I finally have my first shift on the trust bank this weekend. It’s been 16 months since I applied so it’s about time. The money is pretty good for weekend shifts, which is obviously exactly what we need at the mo. Hopefully things are beginning to look up. Regular readers (thanks you three) will know that times have been a bit dodgy and stressful for a while now so bit of good stuff is most welcomed.

Anyway I am off to drink a bit of wine, watch a bit of telly and then get my poor punctured arse up to bed!

Rumple got the job!!

I think it is finally really sinking in that this time next year I won’t be a student anymore. I will be a real live nurse. Weird. One thing that worries me a little bit is that I have never even been shouted at during my training, so will I cope if once I’m a nurse a poorly person tries to knock my head off.

It’s not that I have never challenged any of the patients/clients that I have worked with. I have. I got called a fucking Nazi once by a lady who had dementia and thought that the ward was a concentration camp. Understandable I reckon, seeing as I was the one telling her that the door was locked and she had to stay. She didn’t screech it in my face though, just stated it as a matter of fact. Thats about as far as any kind of confrontation has gone though.

I haven’t had the opportunity to practise any kind of de-escalation stuff, not really. I have been in situations where I have had to be negotiator between two patients who were about to kill each other over a cushion, but never to save my own ass from getting mullered.

I am hoping that the skills I had to use when I worked at the drug rehab unit (where I was a project worker up until I got pregnant with little piggy) will stand me in good stead. I got shouted at there quite a lot, and also had a stalker who it transpires was planning on raping me at some stage during his programme. Nice.

I am hoping that I get PICU (Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit) for my next placement where it is likely that I will have to de-escalate something or other.

It’s big piggies birthday today. He’s 12!!

I am now back in the swing of being a fully fledged student tosser. We went back to Uni properly on Monday. Much the same as the lovely Cellar Door (find her blog on my blog roll…tis very good) I have realised that being at Uni can be a pain in the arse. Theres nobody in my group that I dislike immensely. Theres some that I like immensely. There are many however would scare the shit out of me if I was ill and they nursed me. Either because a/ they haven’t got a fecking clue….or b/their general attitude is poor.

I think that the Uni can’t wait to get rid of us. Our group has a bad reputation due to the ratio of nobs to nice people (with nobs far outweighing the latter). On our first day back, we went over the ground rules extensively AGAIN. Our lecturers felt that this was necessary…you know the usual “respect for others opinions” etc. I felt quite insulted really seeing as I’m 33 years old, but hey ho..maybe the people that need to listen will ignore everything they said in much the same manner as they have done for years one and two  take it on board.

On a positive note, I have finally decided after much deliberation that my dissertation will be about suicide in schizophrenia..with particular attention paid to command hallucinations. It is probably the 846267549th idea that I have thought of, but I handed in my proposal this morning so thats that. I’m actually quite looking forward to getting stuck into it.

On another positive note, Rumple has a job interview on Friday. They phoned to let him know this afternoon. Seems to have lifted his spirits a bit cos he has not been liking this staying at home business. He has been particularly grumpy and quite difficult to be around. It has really knocked him though, being made redundant. So fingers crossed

I finished placement yesterday. The staff and clients gave me such a lovely send off. The staff said lots of nice stuff and got me some nice cards. The clients bought me a necklace and bought/made cards for me. They trickered me by asking me to go and do the register in the community lounge. When I got in there I noticed that all of the clients, nurses and doctors were in there. I clicked that I had been duped. Twas a very nice duping though. One of the clients made a speech and I got a round of applause. Most touching…I had a lump in my throat. I will miss those guys and I would work there in a heart beat if there was anything going when I qualify.

On a shit note, Rumple got made redundant yesterday I think he is kind of relieved that it is all over. He has known that he was up for redundancy for a month now and so it has been playing on his mind . But now he knows where he stands he can move forward. He has got a couple of jobs lined up, doing bits and bobs for people. I am glad cos I think that if he had nothing to do then he would get really down. Poor old Rumple. It’s really important to him to be providing for his family, and anything less makes him feel like he’s failing I think. I don’t think he is, I think he does a top banana job. We’ll wait and see what happens though, no point stressing over it cos it won’t change anything.

So back to Uni next week…year 3. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone, but not to the HUGE workload that we have awaiting us!!

After my disaster with forgetting to go to placement, things have been really good. I am really enjoying being back there. Shame I have to leave in 2 weeks cos I have just got to know the new lot of clients. I’m quite looking forward to going back to Uni for my final year though. Just can’t believe that it’s come round so quickly! Have finally decided on what I’m doing my dissertation on after alots of different ideas and changing my mind loads.

The piggies are back at school. Middle piggy started junior school on the Friday, and big and little piggy started on Monday. They have all settled in really nicely, which is a huge relief. I thought the most traumatic would be watching my smallest boy start school, but he was fine. I think because he has been at nursery for 2 years made for an easy transition. He just gave us a kiss and waved us off as he got stuck into the toys. Watching big piggy gp off to senior school nearly made me cry though. He was a bit worried and nervous, despite saying that he wasn’t and it was hard watching him go off into that big school, where he looks so little now.I think that the fact that I was bullied at big school made me nervous for him. He is nothing like I was as a child though. He isn’t a nervous boy and he has bags of self esteem and confidence. He has made new friends and he is enjoying it. He got the tip mark in his class for a maths test aswell which made me very proud

Middle piggy seems to have pulled away a bit from the kid that he has been hanging around with for the past couple of years. This kid is really bossy, and also the most popular boy in the class. He says that he is getting on okay at school but I will check with his teacher when I go and see her next month.

So things are going well at the moment, which is good cos I started to feel a bit down towards the end of the hols. We just need to wait and see what happens with Rumples job now, but it is out of our hands completely so no point getting too stressed about it.