Running in the rain lately

Hello my dears. I have been a very naughty blogger and am way behind on recording the events of these past Autumn and Winter seasons. My excuse is that I started to work at the hospital in September 09 and have just been in my own student nurse world since then. Working as a nurse has been interesting and I feel another realm has opened up to me that I was not aware of before. I started working at a West London hospital on a Colo-Rectal/General Surgical Ward. Before I could say cholycystectomy I was removing catheters, nasal gastric tubes and cannulas from our lovely post op patients. I was able to stand in theatre watching bowel surgery up close and personal. I have the utmost respect for the multi-professional teams that make surgery safe and possible. Working on this ward has also helped me to reinforce my healthy eating and lifestyle habits. I do not ever want surgery however 'safe' it may be:-)
At the beginning of February I started to jog with a friend. She has run marathons before and is at a greater fitness level I should say. She has been fabulous at encouraging me, showing up in the rain and generally being a great running buddy. This past week I had a wonderful breakthrough: I can now run over two miles without stopping to walk at all. I run with her three times a week at the moment and want to increase that to four times starting next week if possible. I think I shall need to go on my own a couple of times due to my early schedule at my new placement. I finished at the Hospital and now am at a residential home for people with epilepsy and learning disabilities. I love this place. I am enjoying seeing the world from someone else's very different viewpoint. I love how accepting the service users are and how much fun we all have during the day. Best of all it is a lot like what I do with my own family so I already feel like I am good at it. I have learned to start peg feeds, administer meds into pegs and to use music and touch to help calm someone. I am presently working with a young man who is autistic and has epilepsy. He seemed very easy to care for until the end of the first day, he had a siezure and afterwards started running at full speed and we couldn't get him to stop. He was in the zone!- and he ran outside in his socks. It is rainy and muddy this past week. He eventually was ready to stop and was ok but I can see how some would consider this challenging behaviour. Hope to catch up more soon.