Hospital Food

By late afternoon I was done with the whole nursing / catering combo and so outsourced dinner to Dominos. As this is a private hospital and we understand the relationship of nutrition and health I did add crudites.

Two kids at home poorly today. Jackson's cold is now a hacking cough. So I had to make some decisions around taking him to the GP or not, doubling his cortisol or not, going to the hospital appointment this afternoon or not. The GP one was easily resolved as it was after 8am and so obviously there was no chance of seeing a Dr today, though they did graciously agree to offering a telephone consultation. Or we could add whether we should we go to a walk in centre or not to the decision tree. Cancelling the hospital appointment was also pretty easy, if for no other reason than taking a snotty, hacking child into a place with sick people is not exactly socially responsible. So we decided to go with the GP phone consultation at 1pm, doubling the cortisol and rescheduling the hospital appointment option.

Well, I say we. As the time zones to SF officially suck I mean me. And in all that decision-making I completely forgot to phone the school to report Anna's absence until they called to check where she was.

Which was on the sofa under her duvet and a pile of tissues which has grown into a mountain during the day. Clearing them away has been one of my least favourite nursing duties.

Relief from nursing duties has come in the form of two dog walks. On the first I met a friend and her pooch and inadvertently found some help for a friend who is looking to put on a play this summer. And on the second I met another friend and secured myself an invite to a drinks' party on Friday.

Sadly no work has been done which does mean some will need to be done this evening but it's not been as bad a day as it looked first thing. I know you could feasibly argue that nursing counts as work but if the ratio of all nurses to patients was 1:2 the NHS would be even more broken.

And one of the loveliest parts of the day has been keeping my New Year's promise to read every day. I kind of lost my reading habit last year and doing it every day for the last 11 has got me back into it and it feels like a little treat to myself. Interestingly as I have just decided that I am doing it everyday no matter what it has taken away the guilt I would normally feel if I spent my lunchtime reading a book. Actually it's taken away the guilt of having an actual lunchtime come to think of it. And it's not like I'm one of life's natural martyrs, just that there is always so much that needs to be done. And as I have reminded myself many times today this is a better alternative to being lonely and bored.

Lesley x