Last April, I had the Best Week Ever. It started with finding out Maya’s school, in between I found out I got into Oncology training and it ended with crossing the Finish Line at the London Marathon.
This time, it was another pretty epic week. It started with Maya starting her first full week of school, in between I had my first week being the On-Call Registrar and it ended with crossing the Finish Line at the Berlin Marathon.
The First School Day School Run
The week started with this… First full day of school, David was on Nights so Single-Mum mode. The kids and I had a game plan and all the clothes were laid out the night before. Xave up at the usual 5:45, me at 6am (packing Maya’s lunch), Maya at 6:15am. We were out of the house by 7:10am, at Breakfast Club by 7:15am, and at Nursery at 7:50am! Success!
Ready for Reg of the Week
Every once in a while… you get rota’d in as the Oncology Registrar of the Week (1 long day then 4 830-1700), holding the bleep that doesn’t stop bleeping. The days starts off with the daily morning handover and going over the plans for 20-30 patients – new, unwell, chugging along, about to go home, or dying. Throughout this, the bleep goes off and all you can do is write the number down.
Then start seeing patients, answering bleeps – calls from the Chemo Day Unit for prescriptions or someone needing an assessment, other teams around the hospital asking advice, calls from GPs and other local hospitals seeking advice, calls from the Acute Oncology Service, calls about patient with a suspicion or proven cord compression, consenting a patient for palliative radiotherapy to the spine, having difficult discussions with patients and families, breaking bad news (“her heart failure may lead her to deterioration before her aggressive lung cancer, and whilst here, she may develop a chest infection”), deciding whether taking a referral or if patient is more suitable in a different ward under a different team, dealing with a very unwell patient and escalating to getting him non-invasive ventilation at the Resp High Care Unit. Discuss with Consultants when stuck. Nothing in the above description is unusual to anyone holding the bleep. These are all pretty standard and are the usual day to day things that we deal with.
Oh by the way… this was also the week of the Junior Doctor/Consultant Strikes. 4 of the 5 days either were Consultant Strike, Christmas Day Cover, or Junior Doctor Strike. Yes, I had to work – despite fully supporting the Strikes. David and I would lose 4 paid days between us, and that’s a lot if you’ve got child care fees to worry about.
Finally, it was Friday and time to hand over the bleep. Friday, was also David’s birthday! I made him dinner when I got home.
Off to Berlin…
I was out of the door by 430am… flight from Gatwick at 8am. The flight was full of runners – Easyjet should have just diverted the flight straight to the Expo at Templehof. I met Yang Yang and Philipp – my good friends and supporters for this race. Love them!
And after a good old pasta dinner and some good laughs, I was ready to run the Berlin Marathon.
Reach for the Seven Stars 