Playing Nurse

(Artist Unknown)

Wow... got to love her uniform!

As of this afternoon I've survived the second day of my Women's Health Gynaecology placement. Helen (fellow midwifery student) and I have concluded a number of things in the short amount of time we've spent carpooling these last few days and I'm sure we'll conclude a lot more than just the following by the end of four weeks:

1. We feel as if we are in first year again.

2. Nursing and Midwifery are NOT the same (we knew this already but there's nothing like a nursing placement to realize it even more). It makes us happy to be midwives and helps us understand why we feel like first years.

3. Our midwifery degree should have more than the one pharmacology subject we took in first year. Giving out drugs freaks the hell out of us!

4. Getting up early makes you yawn all day.

5. Working in a mixed gynae/med ward means we will be caring for men. Helen has, I have yet to experience it.

6. Hospitals are great places to get lost in, especially when they are being renovated!

7. Caring for six women in a surgical ward is very very different from postnatal ward looking after six postnatal mums and six babies, or labour ward with one or two birthing women.

8. Nurses are much more happy to have students buddied up to them than are midwives.

9. Nurses need to have fantastic time management skills. The ward routine has Helen and I fascinated.

10. Feeding, washing, moving and providing complete care for elderly women is very confronting.

11. Cups of tea are very very welcome.

12. Taking down and putting on new dressings over wound and surgery incisions is really fun.... but even so, four weeks of nursing skills in our final year of midwifery seems just a little excessive.

13. I miss midwifery.... in light of the PMS post a few posts below, it's nice to know!

Oh... and thanks so much for the comments in the last few posts, it's meant so much!

3 weeks 3 days left.

Let them go quickly!

Blood and Tears

Lost List by Penelope Illustrations

Strange how something that seemed so closed can suddenly become more closed than you thought it could ever be.

I broke up with the guy I'd been going out with for seven, nearly eight, years this February only two weeks after he'd moved here to Australia from America. You change a lot between the ages of 14 and 21. We haven't seen much of each other the last four or so months, but I had expected to say goodbye face to face before he went back to the US.

Thinking he was leaving this evening I went at lunch time to pick up some linen he'd borrowed to stay on campus and to say the final goodbye. His side of the room was empty, there weren't even any bags. I stood at the door and his room mate, Heath, came a few moments later from the car park. His usual cheerful self he jumped up expectantly and got the neatly folded towel, sheets and blankets from the cupboard.

I filled my arms with them, and paused, attempting to ask the question I was trying to form into words, "When did he leave? I thought he was leaving tonight."

Realizing what had happened Heath's eyes lost their smile as he told me they'd gone to the airport early that morning.

Life happens, not always as we expect. I understand that he might not want to say goodbye, things were settled a number of months ago, none the less I was still shocked. All was closed tightly but now with his going it's almost like a new level of closure has just reared it's head and closed even further over everything. And as always with each layer of closure there is always something to let go of.

I had to let go by writing my thoughts out this morning before going to say goodbye. And in writing and crying and letting go, I bled. This was the first time in five months that I haven't bled on or before the dated I expected. Being late to bleed was strange, but perhaps I needed to let go of things in my heart before my body could let go too. It felt very fitting.

PMS

That's right it's the 20th of June, I feel an emotional wreck because I'm almost about to bleed (oh and and a few other reasons mixed in with the hormones makes for a most powerful cocktail). Knowing that PMS is one of the reasons I feel this way doesn't make me feel any less emotional.

I would happily curl up in a little warm hole in the earth today and cry till the world ended.... I'll probably feel that way till I see red when everything will be fixed.

If anyone speaks to me about FTJ or fulltime jobs or uni or what I want to do with my life or making money.... I think I might get rather scary or honest. Thinking about it, being honest would make me feel a whole heap better!

I want to stop... just stop... so i can cook, garden, love others, create, write... all in a little house on the side of mountain and forget midwifery as a 'job' and start it all over again when I get to the point of loving it again. I wish i could pursue midwifery without working in hospital. I want to stop feeling stuck and unable to get out of the mess FTJ is in... but I'm so stuck I'm afraid to do what I need to do to put it right again. I feel frozen. I'm afraid of working as a midwife next year, I don't want to work as a midwife next year. I want my family to know how stuck I feel... instead of being told I'm just not using my time effectively and being slack.

There are those moments you just want to quit.....