And I've been working like a dog.... lah lah lah lah lah lah..... funny how I am singing when all I feel like doing in curling up and fading away, like the blossoms of spring, when the weather starts getting warmer. The beautiful hues of colour, fades, falls off the trees in a shower of pink snow.....
I am looking at my life, and all I can see is failure...
When I left school, all I wanted to be was be a piano teacher, I relied on that so much for my future career that I didn't really work that hard at school. Piano and music lessons were taken privately in Malaysia, it wasn't covered in school. I was good at music theory, up to a point, my piano playing wasn't all that bad, and scoring a merit for Grade 8 practical exam and distinction for Grade 8 music theory sealed my fate, or so I thought. After completing my A Levels, I left school and was teaching music theory for 1 music teacher, and had a few students of my own. I also continued to work towards my teacher's diploma. In addition, I was also a piano accompanist at 2 dance schools.... that seemed like an age ago, and it is, I am talking about more than 20 years ago. I did this for about 3 years, when I realised that I was no where near ready to do my teacher's diploma, nor could I improve my piano playing, and decided that I had to do something else instead.
That something turned out to be the biggest change in my young life. I left home big time, left Malaysia and travelled all the way to England where I had been offered a place in Bristol to train as a registered general nurse...I had some of the best years of my life in Bristol. I found I adapted well to nursing, even though it was a career I had decided upon as an adult, and then only because it was the only course I could do that was self sufficient, meaning there were no fees to be paid and I would be paid a wage to train.... this meant I did not have to burden my parents with having to pay my fees. I met Dave in my 3rd year of nurse training, we fell in love, we lived in sin for more than 3 years, then decided to get married, and organised the whole wedding in 5 weeks! My parents flew over, wondering if I had a bun in the oven! Oh, between living together and getting married, I also trained to be a midwife, and managed to snag myself 2 full time posts, one of which I had to give up.
My children were also born in Bristol, we had a lot of friends, and life was good....after Jasmine was born, I decided to give up midwifery and went back to nursing.... there again, failure as a midwife? We had also moved to Nottingham. I went from working in hospital to primary care, working as a practice nurse for a GP, this lead to me going for the MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice.... again..... failure loomed.... I did the course work and managed to keep up with being a wife, mother, housekeeper, cook, cleaner, practice nurse, and student... but just about. I enjoyed the course, we had some wet lab anatomy lessons which I loved and soaked it all up like a sponge. The course was also clinically based and the GPs I was working for failed to grasp this as they could not afford to give me any more hours nor did they find it possible to support me clinically.... failure looming big time.... I could not see anyway of achieving my clinical competencies.....I must say one positive thing on their behalf, they really needed me to get my non-medical prescribers qualification, as that would allow me to prescribe drugs/treatments the patients I saw. These were usually travel vaccinations, the oral contraceptive pill, antibiotics, analgesics, emollients, asthma medication and the like. They supported me fully during this part of the course, and I passed this with a bit of hard work. I loved pharmacology, I learnt so much I thought I needed a new head!
During this period, I decided to get another job that would hopefully give me more clinical hours and commenced working for the out of hours GP service... this is the emergency GP service, for when GPs are shut. I started off working on the telephone, triaging patients, suggesting self help remedies or offering them an appointment or home visit by a GP, as necessary, following my assessment of their condition. Some times they were advised to go straight to the emergency department, or we would call them an ambulance. I really enjoyed working for this service. I met some great people, colleagues and patients alike and we always had such a laugh. I then progressed on to face to face consultations, so if a patient came in to the primary care centre, eg they were offered an appointment with the emergency doctors, I would assess their vital signs and general condition and quickly assess if they needed to see a doctor immediately or whether they would be safe to wait a while. From this I progressed to my final nursing post, Advanced Nurse Practitioner. As I was doing the masters and being taught clinical history taking and examination, diagnoses and treatment, I was allocated my own patients to consult. I did this in the emergency department of a hospital in Nottingham. I would be referred patients that were inappropriate attenders, usually people that could not get an appointment with their GPs, usually with minor ailments or injuries. I could also refer directly to ENT and the early pregnancy clinic for threatened abortions ( bleeding in early pregnancy), so I was referred some of these patients too. I also had access to GP admissions, either medical or surgical, so sometimes some of these patients came through as well. If this wasn't enough, as the ED dept had a kids ED, sometimes, I got to see children too! Sometimes, people come to ED as they have lost confidence in their GP or they believe that if they are at the hospital, they will definitely be referred on to the specialist they want to help with their ailments. Perhaps it's like fast tracking, but unfortunately, that is not what Emergency Departments are for. If you have a bad knee and have had one for the last 18 months, and it's not getting better, but it's not getting any worse, then you will probably get streamed to see me, and I will probably refer you back to your GP, which will probably make you mad, but that's how the health service works!
My greatest achievement in this dept was managing to diagnose an abdominal aortic aneurysm on an 80+ gentleman who had attended ED for persistent back pain, despite having seen his GP the day before, and on trying to get another appointment the day I saw him, the GP had no appointments left and told the gentleman to get himself to ED. He arrived by ambulance as he did not have transport. He was streamed by a senior ED nurse, and he ended up in my consultation room. Poor man, was in so much discomfort despite taking the painkillers prescribed by his GP the day before. After taking a history, and starting with his vital signs, I continued my top to toe examination and when I saw that pulsating mass in his abdomen... RED FLAGS sprung to mind. As I had failed one of my clinical assessments due to back pain and not knowing all the red flags, I was totally clued up! He was quickly referred back to Area 1 and before I knew it he was in resus! I cannot recall exactly how large his aneurysm was but it was something ridiculous like 35cm in diameter, I am not kidding.... the best part of this was that he survived the surgery.
The next failure was not finishing the Masters. I was banging my head against a brick wall at my original practice nurse job, the GP who was meant to be my mentor was not pulling his weight. He told me to go to Uni, get the info on the latest treatments, then give him and his partner an update! He did not think it was his role to teach me anything about anything..... The out of hours service was not able to help me out with a mentor, and so, after quite a lot of deliberation and self beating up, I exited the course....half completed.... but this turned out to be a blessing as a few months later, Dave was offered a job in Trinidad.... so, we packed out bags and flew to the Caribbean!
Not going to revisit Trinidad as I have a separate blog dedicated to that...island life in the windies.
Now we are in Canada, I have almost decided not to go back to nursing...so there you go, another failure, it's the one thing I am fairly good at, love and enjoy, yet the thought of 12 hour shifts fill me with dread. So, I go get a job at McD's. It is convenient, as it's very close to home, the hours are flexible and it's working with food! A different direction...... this morning I am not so sure.....new job, new challenges, but the same old me....another failure in the wings? Waiting to pounce on me?
I was going to rant and rave, but after having 2 hours of sleep post my night shift at McD's, I got up and decided to clean the house... I tried out the central vacuum, not used one of those before, and clean all the carpets, on 3 floors, cleaned the 4 bathrooms, cleaned the kitchen, mopped all the hardfloors and stairs. After all this I felt decidedly calm. There's something about a tidy and clean house that just oozes feelings of warmth and happiness.
I started out being really negative, using the word failure, but really all that has happened in my life on reflection is that I have changed course as I grew and developed and I don't mean physically, even though there is a lot of evidence to prove that this is so too. Instead of staying on the well trodden path, getting stuck in a rut, I have found courage to make a change and along with change, come risks. Sometimes making the wrong choice but mostly making the right ones. Initially, there was only me to consider, then Dave and me, and now the family and me. I have another night shift on Friday.....I will reassess the situation after that shift, time will tell...is this the right path?
“Success builds character, failure reveals it” Dave Chekett
Try and fail, but don't fail to try. Steven Kagawa I am not sure why this copy and paste is underlined, very annoying! LOL
Not for want of trying... that's me!
