Category: Uncategorized
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Learning To Be A Nurse Glasgow 1983
I’m from a family of nurses going way back. Great auntie Evelyn nursed in London during WW2. Great Auntie Jean was a “Call The Midwife” helping women birth at home, day and night in 1950’s Greenock, Scotland. Three of dads sisters were nurses and my own mum a community district nurse. Watching her leave home…
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A Community Midwifery Service QLD 1997 – 1999
An accurate quote ❤️ Midwifery is both joyful and painful. We see the best and worst day of people’s lives in our everyday experience. We are incredibly lucky to be part of women’s lives when things are bright and jubilant, but also when they are darkest and most difficult. It allows us to see the…
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Another Day At The Office
EMERGENCY 🤕🤒 Sign in at fish- bowl command centre, head off into the mix of unwell humanity. What’ll the day bring? Slight nerves give an edge working in a place like this, keeps you on yer toes. People everywhere, organised chaos. Police, bodies slumped on trolleys, paramedics queue with their unwell human cargo, “not too…
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A Shift On Maternity ward, Australia 2022
It’s a morning shift, the ward is a long, large L-shape with six bays (four beds in each) seven single rooms and two soundproofed bereavement rooms. Looking in from the entrance there’s a hive of activity. Cleaners mop, wardies push beds, partners look for loved ones, midwives wheel babies in cots, trolleys jostle for space…
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Chicken Owning FYI
Owning a few chickens, how hard can it be? Give em seed, leftover greens, fresh water, shelter, room to do their chicken thing then sit back and enjoy. The scratching, the dust bathing, the sun baking, the cute clucking. Therapy pets in your own back yard, delightful.
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Emigrating to Oz
A young couple, Nurse/Midwife and Marine Ecologist, leave cold, rainy Scotland for sunny sub-tropical Queensland Australia. He loves adventure, change, excitement, she loves calm, order, peace and quiet. Their bond, an overdeveloped care factor for all living things. One small block of land and many animals later, how does it all work out? (What could…
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Chapter 9. The Runaway Cow
Acreage and animal ownership brings joy and pain in equal measure, responsibility and hard work, you have to be up for it all. We’ve learnt on the job, made a few mistakes along the way. Our first ever cow (Sally) arrived in a hired trailer. It was dusk. Rob drove in , shut the gate,…
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The Night Shift
1988. Glasgow Royal Infirmary, young lad, drunk, “get tae fk, get aff me ya bastards!” face slashed (bottle/knife?) skin flapping, pinned down by police and porters, blood spraying up the curtains, on the docs white coat. “Keep still!!” My job, apply pressure (try not to get stitched to mental boy in the process) fingers scarily…
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Chapter 12. Womens Theatre
We take modern surgery for granted. Anaesthetists render us unconscious, surgeons make deft incisions, cauterise, snip, scrape, biopsy, repair. We wake without remembering a thing. A miracle of modern medicine. Not a miracle of course but the result of many highly qualified individuals coming together, an array of pharmaceuticals, specialized equipment and instruments. I often…
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A Difficult Day
The morning starts with a bang. Doctor’s gather in the hallway, rainbow lorikeets coming to roost. Bedside, the red button is pushed, “don’t worry M…, lots of people will arrive soon, you need some extra help.” Blue curtains whooshed back, “Need me to call?” “Yep” A seamless dance begins, crash-trolley in, furniture back, medics swoop,…
The Midwife/Nurse Hobbyfarmer 