London one-way!

So, if Lija actually updated her blog you can get the facts from her, but just to clarify, Lija “only” dislocated her kneecap, so please don’t freak out on account of what I write here – in all seriousness, my blog is not serious and I meant to write “gebroked” playing on the German version of kaputt. Deal with it. I’m actually enjoying the fact that my issue with having things stolen has been replaced with Lija’s issue of constantly having other people injure her. Boo yah!

Should I then add that she re-injured it the other night? Nah, you can ask her about that.

I, on the other hand, had to re-do my First Aid training last week, as well as Basic Life Support (CPR), Health & Safety, Manual Handling and Abuse Awareness. The last one is my least favourite and most depressing topic, but it does have to be talked about. Vulnerable people can suffer many forms of abuse, not just the obvious, and as HCA’s (Health Care Assistants) that are sometimes the only people who go in and care for individuals, it’s important we see they are being cared for properly and know what signs to look for when we think there may be problems.

Of course, then you also get the poor dears who are so overcome with dementia that hallucinations and erratic behaviour are common in them, which can be quite tough as a carer, and there’s not much you can do except stay positive and put it behind you. But it can be emotionally overwhelming at times and after a particularly horrid overnighter last Friday caused me to slump home and crawl into bed to catch up on sleep and put the previous twelve hours behind me.

A few things have changed even in the last 12 months under First Aid regulations, mainly because we are all so different that First Aid has to relate to every physical unique body. Take a cold compress, for example. Last year the deal was, when you have a bruise, put a cold compress on the bruise for ten minutes, then take it off for ten minutes, and continue doing that for about an hour. Now however, you put it on for ten minutes, and then take it off until the body part feels like it’s gone back to room temperature, and then you can put the compress back on again.

Haha I actually had to use that one when I got back from First Aid that night. One of the Italian boys Ricky hurt himself at work that day and showed me this huge purple bruise on his hip, so I said You need to ice that. Yes, Yes, he says. No really, you need to put ice on that. Yes, yes, he smiles at me. ARGH! Boys! So I went down to the pub and asked Amy for some ice in a cup, took it back to Ricky’s room where he was lying in bed in utter pain. I grabbed a grotty t-shirt from his dirty laundry pile, wrapped the ice up and stuck it on his hip. Hold that on for ten minutes, then off, then on again, I commanded. Yes, he said. Fortunately the next day it looked a bit better – I told my trainer Rachael, who just laughed at the whole thing but was quite proud at the same time!

I also went to my first Qype meet. For those of you who don’t know, I write reviews for a website called Qype.com. I get points for the reviews and at different stages gain levels of knowledge. As I’ve passed 1000 points (I’ve been writing since January) I’m now a Qype Ninja, and a few of us Ninjas were specially invited to try a new Mexican restaurant in Goodge St. We had nachos, burritos and cinnamon sticks with ice cream and margaritas to top it off! Check out my review here.

It was a good night out doing something different and meeting some new people, and I’m down for the next Qype event tomorrow night – a ghost walk for halloween!

The office has been hilarious, in fact, I should write to the script writers of The Office with a few ideas from the last week. The funniest thing happened yesterday when we were phone-conferencing Jasmine into the weekly team meeting and Chiara had to pop out to get a delivery. She walks back in several minutes later with two huge boxes in her arms and dumps them on the table. You see, two of the girls are doing a Christmas countdown feature on how to spend ten quid a week for Christmas, and this week they’re testing turkeys – so ASDA sent us about ten foil containers with turkey breast, turkey with trimmings and gammon – which sent the office into a spin with everyone laughing, shouting, and leaving Jasmine confused on the other end of the line while we were grabbing containers and running to the fridge.

Despite all the fuss, I’ve been working from Jasmine’s today so I cooked up one of the gammon hunks for lunch – it was quite good! I also had to record her TV features from the DVD player to a disc because no one else knows how, and I’m helping work on her current book. Can’t say I’m not keeping busy!

Also, this week I was interviewed by a student writing a feature for a magazine. She had read my Dating on a Budget article and wanted to refer to me as a financial expert. Hmm…we’ll see how it goes hey?!

It’s only 9 weeks till the end of this year and I can’t wait – there’s so much to look forward to – despite winter…clocks go back this weekend here.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.